So Much For Love
by mr. eames
Summary: Sirius Black was done with girls...but there was that new boy, the pale, small one that was a self-professed non-believer of love. Yes, he did find himself oddly intrigued by Remus Lupin. Sirius/Remus. Boarding School AU. –discontinued.
1. Brand New

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: I've been wanting to write this for ages and I finally wrote the first chapter. I actually did tons of research as to what being at a boarding school entails. In the end I actually am modeling it after a real boarding school my friend Taryn goes to in the United Kingdom, so hopefully I'm not too far off from what the school is really like. This entire story is AU, no magic and includes the main pairing, which is slash. Just a hint to not read it if you don't like slash. Also, this isn't beta'd yet and I'm dyslexic. For shame, I know.  
**Disclaimer**: I don't own the characters and don't claim to.

**Chapter One**: Brand New

As most things do, it all began with something new. In this case it was a someone, but Sirius Black wasn't one to deal with such details as that. At times he could debate when things had really begun, but he did know that it all hinged upon the new student in their house. With only seventy boys in Elmshurst house it was easily apparent when someone joined their ranks. To a certain point Sirius had convinced himself that, whether in Elmshurst or not, he would have noticed him, the newest edition to Bromsgrove School.

Libraries were not a place that Sirius was in often before that time. Once or twice a week he dropped in to pay literature a visit for class relationships only, but most of the time he strayed away from the collections of knowledge. Despite this, he was studying in the library that day, a last ditch effort to pass his history test that morning. Uncharacteristic to the last bit, he was ditching breakfast in favor of his studies. It was not something he would usually do, but it could possibly be chalked up to fate.

While he was reaching for a book on the French Revolution, the main focus of the exam he was preparing for, a loud clatter came from behind him and them the soft mutterings of someone who was frustrated. Sirius turned to see a plethora of books on the floor, one centimeters from where he stood, and a young man kneeling on the floor, gathering them up in a hurry, his face covered by a tawny shock of hair. Sirius leaned over and picked up the book closest to him.

"The Renaissance, mate? We're a bit ahead of that, you have some catching up to do," he said, looking at the book in his hand and then looking towards his unknown companion.

"Oh, I know. We were ahead of it at my last school as well," the boy responded, a compilation of books now collected in his arms, amber eyes shining underneath messy bangs. "Just some light reading." Sirius almost laughed until he realized that there were no jokes and that he was being serious. He dropped the book upon the already growing pile.

"I'm Sirius Black," he offered his hand as if to exchange a shake, but quickly realized his mistake and laughed at his own foolishness, withdrawing the extended hand and pulling it back through his raven hair.

The smaller boy, he was, smiled at this in passing. A curious action, seeing as most people would have laughed along with Sirius. It was almost as if he wasn't even amused. "I'm Remus Lupin and, ah. I've heard of you."

Sirius raised his eyebrows as a few stray locks of hair fell into his view. "Have you _really_?" Truth be told, he wasn't that surprised. He was rather well-known to the school body of just over a thousand, if only by name and reputation. It was his best friend, James, that every one knew and Sirius was just the devious best friend to the malicious cause of corrupted youth.

Remus excused himself, citing the fact that he had to get to class soon and Sirius realized he had the same goal. In spite of his good intentions in the library that morning, he hadn't gotten much done at all and he was forced to go to class as such. In light of his recent academic performances, he had to imagine this wouldn't be a huge loss. Though he was rarely ready for what his teachers through at him he still achieved above average marks; ones he could surpass if he put work into it, but ones he was satisfied with nonetheless.

Their history teacher, Binns, might as well have been dead the way he droned out the instructions for their test. Sirius kept his eyes attentive to the people around him rather than to the speaker. He caught James' eye from where his mate sat next to him and they exchanged displeased looks, because the state of class was not over. Remus was sitting diagonally two seats away from him. The new boy looked to be paying attention even though he wasn't expected to take the test. He seemed to feel Sirius' eyes on him and turned for a quick second in which Sirius winked and Remus flushed and turned back to the teacher, feigning interest.

* * *

"He's interesting, to say the least," James said, a week later, shrugging. "Two girls have asked him out already. And he said no to both of them." They sat together in their dorm room on the late September night. James on his bed, looking near ready to fall asleep and Sirius by his desk, work spread out untouched as the two spoke of the new student.

"Quite on the contrary he's boring according to most people," Sirius replied, as he tipped the chair he was sitting in precariously onto one leg, a balancing act that required only recklessness. "Doesn't talk much, but all the girls think he's just heavenly. Must be smart I suppose, he's on here on a scholarship, isn't that right?" With a loud thud the chair landed back on four legs and Sirius left it to rummage through one of his coat pockets.

James shrugged once more. "That's what Evans said," he muttered, referring to a redhead who had plagued both of their romantic lives at one point or another. For Sirius it had been reality, but for James only in his dreams did he obtain Lily Evans. Sirius had always figured the subject wasn't something to be joked about, lightly or otherwise, and the miniscule days that he had dated her for were never mentioned between the two mates for this reason. "What I don't understand is his apparent philosophy on love."

"And what would that be?" Sirius asked. He bit his lip as he threw his jacket aside and then moved towards his trousers. "Ah and ha," he said with a gratuitous waving of his hand, reaching into the back pocket and exposing two cigarettes. "Stole them offa Carlisle. He was only more than obliging when I mentioned telling the Headmaster he had a pack." James grinned and accepted the smoke that Sirius held out to him.

"Now as for love," he said, leaning back onto his pillow. "The thing with this Lupin boy's idea of it is that he has none."

"How's that?" Sirius asked, producing a flame with the book of matches that was, ironically, emblazoned with the crest of the school they were in. He offered James the light and then lit his own cigarette and sat down on his bed, undoing his tie and inhaling his favorite brand of death slowly, then letting the smoke rise from his mouth in small clouds of toxins, up to the ceiling that he spent all hours of sleepless nights inspecting.

"Well, don't ask me," James said, leaning onto his side, head propped up by hand, waving the lit cigarette into the air. "I'm not him. Personally, I think he's wrong. Evans fancies him, I think, but she knows she doesn't have a chance in hell." A mask of scorn decorated James' face. "She's the one who told me all this about him. Apparently they're great friends."

"Poor thing, he doesn't even know it yet and he's made an enemy of Prongs," Sirius joked. James threw a pillow at him. "Oi! You know you like it, those stupid nicknames we had during Prep School, with Pettigrew, remember?" He laughed at the look on his mate's face and raised the cigarette to his lips. "You never forget anything after all."

Indifference marked James' face, but memories floated freely in his eyes. "That was a while back, but of course I remember. The first time we met you called me a pussy because I rode horses." Sirius' bark of a laugh was extremely loud this time and he clamped a hand over his mouth, snickering into his palm. "That's right, shut it, Padfoot, you dog," James said with a smirk, tapping swirling ashes into the nightstand's drawer; they had a nice collection going.

"_Harsh_," Sirius said, grinning as he leaned against the wrought-iron headboard of his bed. "And Wormtail, what do you suppose that sneaky devil is up to right now?"

There was a snort from the other bed and then: "Sleeping, I reckon."

"How right you are."

After that they fell into a comfortable silence, conversation dying like the burning cigarettes. Lights out was soon after and James promptly fell asleep as he always did, the lucky bastard, Sirius mused. He, on the other hand, had a profound problem with sleeping lately. Every time he tried to do such a thing as closing his eyes and escaping for some number of blissful hours – or at least some sub-par minutes – his mind would wander off unto some obscure premise, arguing with his own mind until the early hours of day when, if he had good fortune, he would sleep fitfully, but more often than not he would pretend to have gotten some amount of rest, something no one had ever questioned.

* * *

They weren't really dating. Sirius hadn't really dated anyone since almost two years ago, not since the Lily Evans disaster. In his mind, girls weren't worth ruining friendships over so he didn't date anyone, at least not in his own words. What he did do, however (and this was in his own words) was shag them. Get in-between their bed sheets, so to speak. Or his own, he wasn't really picky about where they did, just that they did at some point.

Honestly, he thought it was a wonder that not every female had caught on. Perhaps, he had thought more than once, they had and they didn't really care. Some of them, however, seemed to think they could reform him to some sort of life of a long lasting relationship by proving to be the woman of his dreams, as if he had one. All he needed, and what he got, was someone with a rather good figure and who knew what they were doing. They should also be willing to spare a week or two of their time, but no longer. Delusional girls were welcomed as long as they met the other criteria.

Suffice it to say that he wasn't really dating her, she was just the girl of the week and she was getting on his nerves more than any girl ever had or maybe it was just a culmination of all his past relationships and whether or not you could call them that at all. Her name was Lindsey, but it didn't matter much to Sirius as they walked through the halls, her actions making him feel like some sort of new accessory. "Would you stop flaunting me like your mum sent me in the post from her vacation in Italy?" he hissed as she waved to some of her friends.

Through a forced smile she responded: "She's in Greece, for the last time, darling."

"Darling? Don't pull that shit on me at a time like this, love."

"What _would _be the right time for you, then?"

To answer such a question with complete truth, Sirius would have to use some form of never, but he didn't answer and he never would. They were done with before dinnertime and it didn't astonish anyone. Just another break-up, and about time, many people thought. For Sirius it was a bit more than that. He discussed it with Lily Evans over a cup of tea.

* * *

The tea was hers and she swatted the match away when he tried to light a cigarette. "Are you looking to get thrown out?" she whispered as they sat in Housman Hall's common room, where Lily boarded. As the only co-ed boarding house it was also the only one that allowed the two sexes to mingle inside its walls. Sirius shrugged and slipped the book of matches into his breast pocket and tucked the cigarette behind his ear. "You know and I know we're not each other's favorite person to converse with. May I ask what you want with me, Black?"

"You like Lupin?" he asked, a smile sneaking its way onto his face. He forced himself to hide it and took on a look of actual interest.

She knew what he was doing and narrowed her eyes at him as she took a sip of her tea. For a moment she just pursed her lips at him, but then she sighed. "Did. We're friends now, he tells me things and we barely know each other." She smile somewhat forlornly and Sirius couldn't suppress the upturn of his lips. "Is that all you wanted to talk about?" She was angry now.

"Oh, kitty has claws, I see," Sirius said mockingly, taking the cup of tea from her hands despite protest from the redhead as he toyed with the rim of the cup. "Not really, no. We've broken up."

"I hope you let James down easily, he can be quite the whiner," Lily said, deftly receiving the tea back from Sirius and giving him a warning glance as he eyed the light brown substance once more. Sirius rolled his eyes at her remark and settled back further onto the maroon couch they were sitting upon. "It just isn't exactly a surprise anymore when you split with someone, Black, sorry."

"Maybe if you had spared me your _curse_…maybe then I could actually stay with someone for more than half a month," Sirius spat, not growing irritated himself, as he always did when he was around the girl for more than just a few minutes. "But that's it, I'm done with you people."

"Us people?" Lily said doubtfully, as she set the tea on the low table in front of them, taking special care to make sure it was at the exact center of the light blue saucer it was meant to be paired with. "What do you mean by that, exactly?"

"Girls. Women. People of the female persuasion. Whatever way you want to put it, I'm not going to date you anymore," he said, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "You people are terribly impossible to deal with." He didn't quite realize the fact that the statement wasn't excluding dating altogether, but only denouncing women, because he wasn't considering anything else.

"You sound like Remus," Lily said, smiling down at the tea.

"Shut your prissy, etiquette-instilled mouth, Evans."

* * *

News traveled much too fast around Bromsgrove. Everyone knew of his denunciation of the female gender and plenty of jokes were thrown at him for his choice of words. "I meant dating in general!" was a phrase he found himself crying over the following days, followed by laughter from his fellow schoolmates. Even James found it amusing that his mate was in such a situation.

"I thought we got rid of girls nights ago."

One thing he noticed besides this situation – which he tried desperately to ignore – was Remus Lupin. He found himself going to the library more and more often, loading up a table with books and then drawing something odd onto paper and perhaps inside a book or two if he was feeling particularly rebellious, which he always was. Remus would walk by and he would trace beneath a line of text, nodding as if he was understanding it. He didn't know why he did this, but they would have blasé conversations because of it.

"If it isn't the founder of Rome."

Remus smiled, dreamily, almost, dropping the book he was reading down from in front of his face and eying the immense amount of books that were in front of Sirius. "And you would be a star in Canis Major, wouldn't you?" he said, looking unsure of whether to just stand there. Sirius kicked the chair across from him away from the table and motioned to it. Remus sat down agreeably.

Sirius smiled glaringly, perhaps more than he should have and said, "The brightest star, you forgot that minor fact. Ah!" He held out his hand for the second time in their barely alive relationship. "If I recall we never did shake hands." And they did then, Sirius' grip firm and Remus' not quite there, almost nonexistent. "There we go, now we've been formally introduced."

"Have we now?"

"We've met every requirement. I know your name, you know mine and apparently my reputation as well and I know some things about you, from outside sources, you understand. Now we've sealed the deal with a shake of hands," Sirius explained, leaning back in his chair and tapping his pen lightly against the edge of the table. Remus stood up and smiled.

"Funny," he said, pushing the chair back underneath the table, meeting Sirius' eyes for a second during the swift absence of words, "I always thought you sealed things with a kiss." With that he walked away and Sirius was left watching him, thinking to himself that there was a lot more to this new boy than what met the eye.

**A/N**: I'm so happy. I love all the MWPP-era characters, even Peter. It makes these stories so much fun to write. And, I would like to add, I'm not getting into Sirius and Lily's past dating much more, just know it was a hot mess. xD Oh, and, gods, I've never smoked a cigarette, so I hope…I don't know, I was like not sure how to write that _at all. _Anyway, review even if you hate it!


	2. Interlude

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: Do I have to say anything? No, I can't really think of anything, besides the fact that David Cook just fucking won American Idol and I'm like, dying of happy. Seriously, huge fan of his. But besides things you're not worried about at all, here's the second chapter. By the way, would it disappoint you to know that I could totally see this becoming a tragedy? Read on.

**Chapter Two**: Interlude

It was not often that the two Black brothers could be seen walking across campus amiably, speaking in relatively civil tones and conversing as if they were companions rather than brothers who both had an incorrigible streak of competition. But, about one time a month, in the middle of the week, this was the case for Sirius and Regulus Black, who would abandon whatever else they were doing to speak to one another for a few choice moments.

Excuses went something along the lines of the fact that they needed to talk. Because once a month Bromsgrove gave the choice to the boarders spend a weekend at home rather than at the school. Both of them cited this dilemma as their reason for talking, when they both knew full well that the monthly dialogue was unnecessary and, worse yet, uncomfortable.

"So, are you?" Regulus would ask, inspecting whatever book he was holding rather than his older brother. This day, it was his Chemistry textbook and fascinating as chemicals and their properties were Sirius was rather keen on the idea that his face was much more pleasing to the eye, but this was standard procedure for them so he didn't say a word concerning the matter.

Every week he would answer the same, "No, since when have I? When I have the choice I stay away from there." There was home, there was Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and there was the most loathed place of Sirius' existence. Watching his brother's face, still intent on his book, there was no emotion and there never was, because it was never a surprise.

"Alright," Regulus said, shrugging it off as he always did, finally looking at Sirius, searching as he spoke the next words. "You never know when someone will have a change of heart." And, just as he had for years, Sirius kept his own face in want of expression and surrendered nothing. Regulus nodded slowly, message received.

They did it every month and they always knew what the outcome would be. Neither one of them spoke much outside of this contact, if they could help it. Even when, on the rare occasion, they found themselves alone, usually at some point during a vacation when they were at home, remarks that flew between them were much more friendly than brotherly. It stemmed from a long string of occurrences during with Regulus was generally favored by their parents and Sirius was generalized as a degenerate. Parting, then, was not the same as it was for other siblings, just a barely existent word of farewell and they were on their own, opposite, ways, not a thought spared between the two about the other.

* * *

James was probably getting suspicious. After all, one could only study for tests for so long, and it was taking up the afternoons they usually spent together doing whatever they felt like doing. Sirius felt a small pang of guilt about this fact, but the caught up with each other later in the day, something that he couldn't do with the reason he was even in the library in the first place.

For him, it was quite odd to be forfeiting the time that he did for the off chance that Remus might be there for five or ten minutes. That was all time they would ever spent talking and yet Sirius would stay for nearly two hours until he gave up. The worst part of it all was that he had yet to make it through any of the books he had picked up. Most of the time he lost interest halfway through anyway.

This particular afternoon, a Thursday, he had just gotten out of his mathematics class and left James, who had knowingly rolled his eyes at the strange behavior of his mate, and made his way to the library. The air was cooler in the large area that was filled mainly with books and pseudo-silence, feigned by whispers and muffled laughter from students. It may have been cooler, but it was also slightly musty, Sirius noted as he grabbed several books from the S section and sat at his usual table.

"Fascinating stuff," he muttered to himself as he looked at the books that fate had caused him to pick up. All three were on star constellations. The most that could be said for the pages he turned was that they didn't bore him to tears. Truthfully, there was something to be said about the arrangements of the heavens, the odd way that they formed familiar figures and faces in the night sky.

He had to hand it to Remus, though; the boy seemed to be catching on to what was going on between them. He was arriving earlier and earlier, this day coming in just fifteen minutes after Sirius had and sitting down before Sirius could even motion his approval for the action. It was an appeasing event, but Sirius disguised his smug smile as a calm one, though he wanted to revel in the fact that it hadn't taken much to build some sort of relationship between him and Remus.

"Do you like it here?" Sirius asked, as he traced the outline of the Pegasus constellation.

Remus seemed to be more focused on the stars than anything else visually and Sirius found himself taking this as an opportunity to look at Remus when he wouldn't get caught. That hair, it was incredibly messy, more than likely because of the wind outside, but seemed like it would be soft to the touch. The way that his unique amber eyes followed the stars with his own brand of disinterested curiosity. Sirius could admit that Remus was attracted, but plenty of people were attractive, Sirius told himself. It didn't mean anything that he thought Remus was attractive.

Somehow he managed to lock onto Remus' words as well as his looks. "I like…certain aspects, I suppose," Remus replied slowly, something close to a shrug accompanying his statement. The words were completely unlike the Remus that Sirius had come to know. The two may have only talked for a few short times, but through it all Remus had come across as someone who was sure of himself and who would say what he was thinking if asked.

"Certain aspects?" Sirius asked. "Do tell, Remus." He leaned forward on the table, partially covering his book and getting the other boy to finally look up at him. Sirius raised his eyebrows suggestively and actually managed to elicit a flutter of light laughter from Remus that did unexpected things to Sirius' heart; things that he ignored completely by his better judgments.

Smiling, Remus shrugged and leaned back, dropping his own book onto the table. He seemed to be about halfway through the huge paperback and Sirius almost grimace, thinking about the fact that he couldn't even finish something half that size. The more he thought about it the more he realized that it was just as unlikely that he would ever make anything more than an acquaintance relationship with Remus. In terms of books, Sirius was something a kid threw together for a class assignment and had been looked through from cover to cover by everyone he knew and Remus was an new piece of literature that everyone had heard about, but only few had taken a chance on.

"Things here and there," Remus said finally, pulling his book back towards him. "Definitely the library, there's a lot to look at, you know." There the conversation died, like all of their past ones had and Remus left soon after, leaving Sirius alone to contemplate his own worth, staring at the star that was his namesake. He shut the book forcefully after a moment, looking at the back cover he noticed it had been donated, not even the library had been willing to pay for it.

He checked out the book regardless of the fact that he wasn't even learning about the stars.

* * *

Later in the day, often times, James and Sirius would sit near the weeping willow that sat close in proximity to Elmshurst house. The willow was known for getting particularly violent when it was windy out, but the wind had died down by the time early evening set in and they made their way down to the grass. Unlike other areas of the grounds there were no places to sit, no benches or tables set up, but they favored the ground anyway.

James was lying down, staring up at the sky while Sirius fixed his eyes upon whatever moved, whether it was a group of girls or some stray leaf floating in the early absentminded winds of autumn. Dialogue was already taking a turn for the worse, but Sirius wasn't about to stop, he never was. "Just saying, mate, you talk to her all the time and then you pretend that she hates you. Obviously there's something there." Talking about Lily Evans always put a damper on both of their moods.

"She talks to him all the time," James responded in a bitter voice that made Sirius roll his eyes as he watched a few skirts hurry down one of the walks. He was trying to convince himself that it was a severely fun activity to watch them, but there was an anomalous, nagging voice in the back of his head, intermittently telling him that giving up on girls would have happened sooner of later anyway. He needed a career that involved ignoring things, he was damn good at it.

"Who?" he asked, shifting his eyes back at James as the girls disappeared past the tennis courts.

"You know who," James said, their eyes met, Sirius shrugged because he did know. "Seriously, I think she hangs out with me so she can talk about him when she's not with him, so it's some sort of, who knows, celebration of all things Lupin. I find it utterly disgusting." When they both knew full well that James wouldn't be complaining if it was a celebration of all things Potter. "Want to know something weird about him?"

"Erm." Sirius didn't commit, just played with the grass, twisting a few pieces until they broke off into his hand and there was a small patch of green that was shorter than the rest. Sirius wasn't sure if he wanted to know something 'weird' about Remus, especially from James who might make it seem worse than it actually was as a symptom of jealousy. James knew that Sirius talked to the new boy, but didn't know the lengths that he went to just to do so.

Not surprisingly James ignored Sirius' hesitation and went on. "I guess he plays the piano," James continued. "Lily says he won't even play for her, but she's so sure he's amazing," he scoffed lightly, looking angry as he thought about Lily. "He has some sort of weird thing about playing in front of people. I'm telling you, if I knew how to play the fucking piano, I'd play it for her," he grumbled, now almost talking to himself more than to Sirius.

"The piano?" Sirius asked, slowly.

"Yeah."

"He never told me he played the piano."

"Mm, I'd be willing to be there's a lot of things he hasn't told you."

* * *

Friday afternoon was rapidly becoming a waste. Sirius had spent the better part of three hours in the library. Four books had folded pages, marking spots he had made his way to and lost interest at. Various subjects were being perused, from the American Civil War to the idealism of Socialism, nothing that he really understood, but things that made him feel substantially more intelligent as people walked by.

A few people greeted him for a moment or two, exchanging a word here and there, but Remus was nowhere to be seen. It shouldn't have troubled him as much as he did. Lately his lack of sleep had been making his overreact to everything, and the frown that was firmly placed on his face was just one example. He feigned a smile whenever he saw someone he knew and let himself look solemn the rest of the time.

Even he knew it was unlikely that he would see Remus after a certain point, but a stubborn aspect of his personality had him convinced to stay for a little bit longer, and he went off in search of another book. Nothing caught his eye as he walked through the numerous bookcases and eyed every subject that was available to them. None of them were engaging in the least, at least not at this point.

Gloomily, he made his way back to the table he had been sitting at, expecting to only have inanimate objects full of ideas left sitting there for him to return to. Instead he found the person he had been waiting for, arguably full of ideas as well, smiling at him expectantly, like he had been waiting for Sirius the entire time. Sirius grabbed the back of one of the chairs but didn't sit down.

"Hey."

"Hey," Remus replied, casually, blinking a few too many times.

"I was actually just about to leave." But he didn't have to, now that Remus was here, he wanted to add. That, oddly, he wanted to talk to Remus until all hours of the night when he scarcely knew a thing about the kid. He would spend all night listening to what he had to say and maybe, in true Black fashion, throw in an opinion or two of his own when it was absolutely essential.

Much to Sirius' own astonishment, the next words out of Remus' mouth were: "Alright, where are we going?" As if he could read Sirius' mind and had decided to be obliging to him. Sirius looked at him questioningly, almost considering this option. "We talk every day and I have the strange feeling you're not much of a library person so – I don't know, I just had the idea that maybe you come here to talk to me?" he ended on a question, playing with his tie and not looking at Sirius as he spoke. His words were dead on, and Sirius cursed in his mind for being such an open book lately, even to people he had just met.

"Well it is almost time for dinner and I am a growing boy," Sirius pointed out, gathering up the books from the table. Remus nodded in agreement and they made there way out of the library. Sirius dropped the books into the return slot. "I haven't finished a book in years," he admitted with a grin. Remus hit him carelessly on the arm with his own book, some sort of sidekick in the form of paper. "Do you remember how you said you had heard of me?" he mentioned, breaking the short silence that had settled between them as they left the library and met the chilly air outside.

"Vaguely," Remus said, squinting his eyes at the evening's sun, which was unblocked by any clouds, shining, though slightly dull, into their eyes. "Why do you ask that?"

"It just so happens that I've heard quite a lot about you," Sirius said, smiling at the slightly nervous look that came over Remus, the way that he looked alluringly golden in the sunlight, stopping in his tracks and then cocking his head to the side, asking questions without opening his mouth. "Nothing bad, mind you. Well, nothing completely terrible would be more accurate. Though, if you've killed someone now would be a simply divine time to let me know."

"We'll talk about that later," Remus said, distractedly, barely seeming to notice the joking implications of murder that had just been made. "What have you heard about me and from whom? I can't imagine who would even know anything about me that would tell people something." Remus, so preoccupied with his worrying, seemed to be alluding to the suggestion that there were some things Sirius wouldn't want to know about him.

Once again: ignoring was Sirius' new best friend. "Lily Evans." Recognition flooded over Remus' face and he looked relived. Either he trusted Lily or she didn't know anything of real substance. "And all I've heard is that you play – or rather, don't play – the piano pretty damn well."

"I'm not playing it for her, so if this is some elaborate plan of hers – " Remus said quickly and defensively.

"Believe me, I'm the last person Lily would ask if that's what this was," Sirius said with a smirk. "What I actually want, is for you to play for _me_." Remus looked at him hesitantly, but didn't outright say anything either way. "Come on, Remus, tomorrow night, it's the weekend, it won't be a big deal. Just one song and I'll never ask you for another." Remus opened his mouth and then let out a sigh.

"Fine, I don't know why, but I'll play a song for you."

**A/N**: Wow, I actually got that chapter done without being overly preachy. Cheers to me. Except not really, I'm not _that _full of myself. Also, I deviated from the actual layout of the school and made them have one library as a separate building. Not a big deal, but you know. I think I'm having too much fun with these characters. They're genius. Damn, thanks a lot Jo for thinking of them first. Review even if you hate it.


	3. Adagio Sostenuto

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: I would recommend listening to the piano song this chapter is named after, not that it matters, but it's my favorite piano piece and if you haven't heard it, you definitely should sometime soon. It's the first movement of Beethoven's the Moonlight Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 14) and there's a link to listen to it on my profile under Inspiration. I'm watching Larry King Live while writing a lot of this, so forgive me, because my mind keeps going off on Archie and Cookie tangents. (American Idol, most people hate it, believe me, I know). I feel your disinterest growing.

**Chapter Three**: Adagio Sostenuto

There was no light streaming through the windows of the dorm room that afternoon, and it was a nuisance to James while it was a blessing to Sirius. The latter was lying down on his bed, so near to sleep that it felt like a dream, a particularly bad one that consisted of James standing in front of the mirror and only closing his mouth when he gave his reflection an extremely weird face or found a piece of lint that no one would have ever noticed, but that the narcissist spent precious minutes getting rid of.

"Look, its sweet and all that you want to look nice, but could you do it without talking about just exactly how pleasing you are to the eye," Sirius said, though his words were muffled greatly from where he lay, under numerous blankets, the cold atmosphere of Elmhurst House during the fall and winter months making this a necessity when one wasn't fully dressed.

James turned around only to give him a quick glare then moved onto more pressing matters, which seemed to involve whether or not his eyebrows were seductive enough. "This is my first chance with her," he said, holding back a mess of raven bangs to expose his forehead, "and I'm not going to mess it up, so please just put up with me for a minute or two." Which Sirius knew really meant that he had no chance in the matter and he was going to either have to leave the room or endure a one-sided conversation with the arrogant young man that he was proud to call his best mate.

"It's not _really _a date though, James, don't get ahead of yourself now. As far as I know she won't even be alone with you," Sirius mentioned casually, turning over so that he was looking at the ceiling. Several cracks had formed over the years to make something that vaguely resembled the Channel Islands, or so James had asserted one drunken night about a year ago.

"Eh," James replied, shrugging lightly, "she'll want to be alone with me in a short matter of time. Sure she might be hesitant at first, but we all know no one can resist me after they give me a chance, no matter how small." No matter how full of himself James sounded in that moment, they both knew that statement to be true. During their years together since they had met in Preparatory School, quickly becoming friends, Sirius had rapidly gone through girls. James was much pickier, but when he chose someone he got them, there was no denying that pattern. So far the only one to have eluded his grasp was the only one he had ever really wanted; Lily Evans.

Pulling himself up to a sitting position and then arranging his maroon comforter around his shoulders, Sirius grinned suggestively at James and raised his eyebrows. "Well _now _it makes sense. You want to shag her before dinner and you want to look nice while you do it. Commendable. Not practical, but definitely commendable." This idea was easier to understand than James' earlier explanation that Lily had agreed to hang out with him while they were allowed to go into town, under the condition that they were joined by two of her friends.

"Actually, erm, no, as surprising as that might be," James admitted, turning around. He was fiddling with the buttons of his shirt as he walked towards his own bed and slowly sat down on the edge, looking at the floor, his brow furrowed as he thought of words to say. "I mean, usually, that's my goal. But with Evans, it's just different than that. That's not all there is anymore. With Evans I can justify having more than just sex. I don't know why, but I'm more apt to think about having a relationship with her than anything, if those are the right words."

"Well," Sirius said, trying to not let the astonishment taint his voice, leaning forward and resting his chin in his hands, "not coming from your mouth. At least, it's not something I would expect from you." They sat in silence for several moments that dragged on much longer than their usual sixty seconds seemed to warrant, it was uncomfortable unlike most of the quiet times they spent together.

Finally James stood up and grabbed his jacket, putting it on as he said, "Well it's not like I was going to keep that line of thinking forever. Lame as it sounds, we're getting older." Taking a few steps towards the door, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket and then stopped, turning back around for a moment. "I mean, we're seventeen, Sirius, you'll be eighteen in a matter of months and so will I soon after. Dating someone isn't just about getting their clothes off anymore and as far as I can figure, it never was."

The door closed and Sirius was left alone with thought to keep him company. He fell back on his pillow and pulled the comforter over his head, preferring the complete darkness that it immersed him in. James was right, he always was. The thing was that Sirius had known what James had said, and he had known this to be true for years, even back when James was oblivious to the idea that sex and love were related, but not the same. Sirius had known this all along but he had never cared.

Something told him that it was about time he started caring.

* * *

Lack of sleep combined with dark surroundings allowed Sirius to fall into a deep and sudden sleep that consumed him. Dreams floated in and out of his mind, never completing, none of them vivid and only fragments to be remembered when he returned to consciousness much later. He barely moved, but whispered in his sleep few distinct words, none to be known to anyone else because no one was in the room to witness them. He slept from the time that James left until much later that night and only woke up when James shook him lightly.

"Where are your cigarettes? I found the matchbook in your jacket, but those are no use if I have nothing to light." Sirius groaned as James spoke and turned over so he was facing the clock on the nightstand, then shot up quickly. "What's the matter?" James asked, giving him a weird look, sitting next to him on the bed. "I let you sleep through dinner, you were out cold. But there's no – hey, are you listening to me?"

"Shit," Sirius muttered, throwing the comforter to the side and hurrying to the dresser that sat adjacent to the end of their beds. Throwing open the middle drawer he grabbed the first pair of trousers he could find and pulled them on over his boxers. "How long have I been wearing this sweater?" he muttered, peeling it off and almost choking on the smell of it which was a toxic mix of nicotine, cologne and pure sweat that had built up since early Friday morning, being shed now on Saturday night, his mind frantically trying to remember if Remus had said to meet him at six or seven and knowing he was screwed either way. "Do I look alright?" he asked as he pulled a dark green shirt over his head.

"I'd do you," James said, with a shrug. "What the hell is your problem though?"

"Meeting someone," Sirius mumbled, running a hand through his hair as he inspected it in the mirror.

"Good luck, it's raining like there's no fucking tomorrow," James told him, motioning to the window where, indeed, the rain was falling heavily, pounding the glass panes with raindrops, the outside landscape barely visible. Sirius glared at the weather, but grabbed the leather his leather jacket, flipping the collar up so it just barely covered half of his face. "Hey, Sirius, before you go off to meet your mystery woman can you give me a cigarette or two?"

"James…just how well did your time with Evans go, because I would have thought you would realize you have my jacket on by now." James looked down in realization, but only grinned in response as he discovered the pack in his pocket, looking at the label on the front fondly.

"Thanks," he said, looking up, but Sirius was already gone.

* * *

The rain was pouring down, making it impossible to see anything definite. Sirius knew where he was going, past the tennis courts and Oakley House, towards the library where he was supposed to have met Remus at seven, while the time was currently a few minutes after eight. Even as Sirius hurried he knew that he had no reason to hope that Remus would still be waiting. The library closed at eight and even if it hadn't there seemed a slim chance that the other boy would have waited for an hour.

Yet, when Sirius reached the doors of the library, beyond which lay the darkness of the closed building, he was surprised to see, standing to the right, a tired looking Remus Lupin, giving him a sleepy smile. "You're a bit late," he remarked, an understatement if there ever was one. Sirius found himself smiling back, curiously enough, scarcely letting his mind delve into why Remus had waited for him so long and only concentrating on the fact that he had, no questioning.

"I fell asleep and once that happens, there's no waking me up," he said breathlessly, not knowing where the need to explain himself came from. "Unless you're James and you really need to smoke," he muttered to himself. "I mean, not even the rain woke me up and well, suffice it to say, I'm a heavy sleeper." His hair was wet and hanging in his eyes, a few, stray drops of water rolling down his face. Sirius shook his head, almost like a dog, trying to get rid of the rainwater in his hair. By default he got Remus wet and offered a charming smile as an apology.

"It's alright," Remus said, forgiving him for two things, killing two birds with one exhausted statement. There were bags underneath his eyes and his skin looked even paler than usual. Sirius tried to ignore these facts, but found it hard to as he watched Remus reach one hand up and wipe the drops of water off his face. "I was reading anyway and lost track of time, I figured I could wait a few more minutes out here, I wasn't looking forward to walking in the rain." He was looking Sirius in the eyes, something that would have normally been uncomfortable, but wasn't, for some reason, in this case. "Erm, but, the piano instruction, she'll have locked up the room by now."

Sirius laughed, shaking his head and throwing an arm around Remus' shoulders. "You're underestimating me, my friend, and that's something you should never do." Remus, who had jumped slightly at the touch, looked up at the taller boy in slight confusion. The ease with which Remus could tone down whatever he was feeling seemed almost more like an effect of his tired condition than a personality trait. "Just because something is locked doesn't mean it's inaccessible."

"What does it mean, then?" Remus asked, as the two took a few steps closer to the edge of the concrete that was protected from the rainfall by the library. A few stray drops hit them and Sirius smiled into the rain, enjoying it by this point. He wasn't one for perfect weather; it came off as fake to him. This was real, the rain that kept things alive when nothing else could, it was one of the few real things left in the world.

Cold droplets that had once been evaporated from the earth hit his face in a chillingly cold reminder of what made him alive. He could feel things. "It just means that we have to try a little harder to get in, but the harder you try to more pleasing the rewards are," he said at last, breaking the silence. Remus silently agreed, nodding once, and they left the protection of the library together for the first time; alive.

* * *

Bromsgrove, and most of the buildings that accompanied the main school, had been built in 1693. Many of the buildings had been rebuilt or remodeled in the early 1900s, but nothing was quite up to standards in an architectural point of view. Locks were either much too easily undone or stuck even with the aid of a key. Only the dorm Houses had reliable locks. No one seemed to expect that anyone would make a point of trying to get back into the school because everyone, teachers included, usually seemed more interested in getting out of the building than getting back in.

Knowing this, Sirius chose the south exit to get back into the main building, easily opening the door and allowing him and Remus to burst into the darkened hallway and out of the rain. The floor was assaulted with water from the two of them. Silence was all around them in the empty and shadowy building. "Where's the piano room?" Sirius asked quietly, looking down the hallway for any sign of a teacher still in the building. As far as he could tell they were utterly alone.

"It's not too far from here, in the music wing, to the left," Remus said, leading the way down the hallway, taking initiative like Sirius never would have guessed he could. For a moment he didn't move, just faintly smiled after the other boy, but then he caught up to him easily, his height making up for the discrepancy of their pace. Neither one of them spoke as they rounded the corner and found themselves in front of the piano room.

"Your instructor really needs to consider lobbying for a new lock," Sirius said with a smile as he inspected the door. He shook the handle lightly and there was a barely audible click. The door easily opened and they entered the room. "Anyone with a brain could get in here, though there doesn't seem to be much of a reason to," he said, looking around. The room was gloomy even when they turned the lights on, which only illuminated things dimly. Stacks of sheet music were on the floor and two pianos were in the room. Sirius didn't know much about the instrument, but did know that one of them was a grand piano, though it certainly didn't look very grand.

"Are you kidding me?" Remus asked, sounded almost excited. He stood next to the grand piano. "This one's nearly priceless, 1821, Erard double pilot action. It may not sound the best but there aren't a lot of them left." There was an obvious adoration in his voice for the object, and he wasn't even looking at Sirius as spoke and then sat down at the bench in front of the instrument, hid hands hovering a few inches above the white and black keys, then placing them silently down and keeping his eyes on them he said, "What do you want me to play?"

"I hadn't really thought about it," Sirius said, walking further into the room and looking at the large amounts of sheet music before them. "And there is a lot to pick from after all." A few moments later found them both sitting on the floor and sifting through everything that was available to them. "What was your old school like?" Sirius asked as he placed a piece by Chopin to the side and moved onto a pile of Mozart's works.

Remus grimaced and stopped looking through the collection he had. "It was a school. Just a normal one, I didn't board there," he said slowly. "I didn't really have a lot of friends. Well, okay, that's a lie. I didn't have any by the time I left." Sirius wasn't sure how to answer this, he had always had friends and couldn't quite relate to what Remus was saying, although it pained him to think of the boy not having anyone and made him wonder why this was. Obviously, and he knew this, Remus was intelligent and almost always reading some book, rarely talking to anyone. But he couldn't think of why Remus would have no friends, he had made a few easily enough at Bromsgrove, so why the lack of friends before?

His train of thoughts was interrupted as several pieces fell from one of the stacks and down in front of him. On the very top was a piece by Beethoven, _Piano Sonata No. 14_. He grabbed it and handed it to Remus. "Play it," he said, in a commanding tone of voice. Remus took the sheet of music and looked it over, although they both knew Sirius wasn't looking for approval.

"You want me the play the Moonlight Sonata?" Remus asked, not looking up from the notes. Sirius nodded and stood up, and then offered his hand to Remus, helping him up so that he could sit at the grand piano. Sirius returned to his spot on the floor, sitting cross-legged as Remus placed the sheet music on the piano. "I've only played this a few times before, so it might not be perfect."

"Very few things ever are," Sirius said with a shrug. Slowly, at first, Remus began to play. The piece was quiet and haunting at the same time and Sirius was indeed reminded of the moonlight as the notes reached his ears, flowing together seamlessly in a soft plea of desperation for some unknown purpose. Remus was so concentrated on the music that he appeared to have lost awareness of his surroundings, the only things real to him anymore was the piano and the noise that it was making as a result of his hands moving on the keys that it possessed.

Sirius felt almost the same way as the music engulfed the room, never quite speeding up and maintaining its unreservedly poignant sound. It became silent in the room much too quickly for Sirius' taste and he voiced this. "Can you play it again?" he asked, softly, in a voice he rarely used, looking up at Remus who opened his mouth for a moment. Sirius smiled at him, though and Remus let out a sigh, but smiled back.

"This is only the first movement, you know, I could play the other two for you, if you want," he said. But Sirius shook his head. Remus turned back to the piano resignedly and began to play the first movement once more. It surprised Sirius how easily the other boy followed what he said, how Remus could have refused to play again or at least played the rest of the piece, but didn't just by a simple movement that Sirius made. In fact, Sirius had half-expected his suggestion to be refused and wouldn't have minded if it had been.

This time the music was just background noise to his thoughts. After all, he knew barely anything about the boy who had agreed to play the piano for him when he apparently never did such a thing. They had known each other for a short time, but had never talked much. There was a connection between them that neither one of them could deny, but at that time it wasn't one that made sense. In most senses they were complete opposites, and yet here they were, spending time together that Sirius had the feeling he would never forget. It wasn't something he usually did. He had no great love for the piano, as Remus obviously did, and yet all he wanted to do was sit in the small room and listen to the notes being played by the other boy.

Six minutes of Beethoven wasn't enough, he wanted more, and he said as much when Remus finished for the second time. Once again he was obliged, by his request, with a third, even more polished, performance of the first movement. It was during these notes that Sirius came to a revelation that would keep him up for hours later that night. The rain had stopped by the time the music did and they left the main building out into the world of post-rain, soaked grass and concrete, drooping leaves on trees and the distinct smell of such a storm that had hit.

No one else was outside, it was almost nine in the evening and that meant lights out. They were cutting it close by the time they entered Elmshurst House. Their dorm rooms were on opposite sides of the building and they parted in the hallway after exchanging a few words. "You do realize we're going to have to do this again," Sirius said, quietly. "You're not rid of me just yet."

"Who said I was trying to get rid of you?" Remus had replied with a smile and then a yawn, covering his mouth with his hand, his obvious fatigue taking a toll on him more than ever as he stumbled lightly to the side, and put a hand to his head. "I have pretty bad insomnia," he said to Sirius' concerned look. "It, erm, it keeps me up most nights, so I just read. It has been getting better recently though."

"I wouldn't really call it insomnia, but I don't sleep very well either. I definitely don't spend the time reading though," Sirius said. There was a small smile shared between them, as they found that they had, at the very least, one thing in common. Without another word they went their own ways. Sirius couldn't sleep at all that night, but at least he knew that, somewhere in the building, someone else was doing the very same thing. And that someone, he had recently realized, was the very object of his own affections, a feeling that he couldn't quite understand at the time. He found the book of star constellations under his bed and spent the night realization how small he really was compared to the rest of the universe.

**A/N**: This is in 2 C2s, I just recently found out. Which, see, I never knew that I could know when that happened. Well, guess what? I can. So thanks to whoever did that, because that's pretty cool, especially since this story's plot is just the lovechild of me and exceptionally boring days at school. In case you can't tell this isn't an Instant Romance, they just met and I'm _sick _of stories that take the route of 'Just Add Water!' Love. I digress. Review, nonetheless and thanks for the interest in this story, it surprises me.


	4. Syncopation

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: All the chapters thus far (and from now on) are connected to music somehow. I'm a musician so I know what a lot of them mean. This chapter is a term a lot of people won't recognize, so I'll define it for you. :D Syncopation is the emphasis on weak beats in a music piece. When you play music there are beats in a measure, and the weak beats don't usually get emphasis, but in this case they do. It's much more complicated than that, but for the sake of time, that's all you get. And on we go.

**Chapter Four**: Syncopation

"Remus Lupin." Sirius woke up with a start. At first he was assaulted by darkness, his comforter over his head and then he realized that there was something incredibly heavy on his chest. Pushing the comforter off his face he found a smiling James looking down at him, sitting on top of him and looking incredibly triumphant. Sirius groaned and tried to turn over to get his mate off of him, but James had him pinned down and he could scarcely move.

"What 'bout him?" Sirius mumbled, lying back wearily, with a sigh. He had gotten only about an hour of sleep, and probably could have slept a good deal longer had he not been woken up so rudely. It wasn't a surprise that he hadn't come around at the time that James had climbed onto his bed. Everyone who knew everything about Sirius Black, meaning James Potter, knew that he couldn't be defines as a heavy or light sleeper; it all depended on the circumstances. And James had fully taken advantage of those circumstances this Sunday morning.

"He's your mystery woman," James said, reaching out his hand to ruffle Sirius' hair. "I mean that in theory!" he cried, dodging Sirius' fist, which still managed to connect with his chin, but resulted in James laughing. "Calm down, Sirius! You get so damn defensive about things. Just because I figured something out for once doesn't mean that you have to give me that look." Because now Sirius looked ready to kill, his murderous face framed by a halo of black hair.

Once more he turned to the side and this time James wasn't prepared, falling onto the floor with a loud thud. "That's better," he said, content now that he was the only one on his bed. He pulled the comforter back over his head and closed his eyes, hoping to get some more sleep since it was his last chance to do so before classes started again the next day. He had no such luck. James was back on his bed in a matter of seconds, throwing the comforter off the bed so that Sirius had no way to be invisible. "Oi. What now, Prongs?"

To that James replied, "What do you two do together?" Sirius ignored the question, instead focusing on the mirror across the room. He looked terribly angry to the unknowing eye, but to someone like James, someone who he had known for such a long time, it was easy to see through his façade. "Read all of your favorite books? Talk about your feelings? Is it ever so lovely?" In the mirror Sirius watched James bat his eyelashes and clasp his hands together, acting as if he was swooning at the very idea.

"You're intuitive. Yes, that's what we do, James. Along with sharing secrets about how to do our hair and which boys are the cutest," Sirius said sardonically. James never was good at recognizing sarcasm, and Sirius watched his face turn into a mask of confusion. Sirius was hardly worried about what his friend was thinking and simply rolled over so that he was facing the opposite wall and didn't have to pay attention to anyone else. There was the faint creaking of bedsprings as James stood up.

"Oh," James said, "and you have a visitor." There was a smile on his voice even if Sirius didn't see it on his face. The inflection in his tone was smug enough so that Sirius sat up and glared at him, suspicious of what was going on already. "Don't worry; he's only been waiting in the hall a few minutes. Told him I had to wake your stubborn ass up. He may not have an impressive pedigree, but he certainly is polite. Unlike some people I'm forced to be around."

Sirius sat up and threw his pillow at James who dodged it, laughing. "You made him wait in the hallway and you complain about _me _not being polite?" Sirius cried, torn between being angry at James for his actions and laughing at the entire situation he found himself in. There was something oddly refreshing about waking up to a conversation with his best mate – who he had found himself missing recently – and to find out that his favorite new student had come to talk to him for, as of yet, undisclosed reasons.

"Now I'll let you be with Lupin, but that's only because he came bearing the news that guess who wants to see me alone." Not only did he look smug, now James looked downright haughty. As if the redhead's approval was all that was needed; the final plateau in the world of society. With her invitation he was now finally a force to be reckoned with. Or at least, more of a force than he had been before.

Sirius glared and said, "The nasty slut, stealing you away like this." He now shifted so that he was sitting on the edge of his bed,

"She's a slut is she?" James said, his face indiscernible. "Well yours is in the hallway and mine is waiting outside, so I'll just be on my way." His last words might have seemed like they were in jest, but Sirius noticed an almost irritated tone to them, hidden behind his well-bred voice the graciousness leaving it for just a split second, an almost unnoticeable thing. Yet, it managed to lower Sirius' hopes for a good day ever so slightly as he watched James leave the dorm room.

"Erm. Is this a bad time?" Remus was in the doorway, looking as if he was imposing on something important. It was the first time that Sirius had seen him in clothes other than the school uniform. It was mandatory to wear the uniform, even on weekends, if you were going to be on school grounds. Sirius often ignored this rule as it wasn't one to be taken too seriously, most of the Senior School students did and got away with it. Remus was obviously someone who abided by the rules, always wearing the white dress shirt, maroon tie and trousers.

While Remus still looked classy in a dark grey sweater, Sirius was wearing the same green shirt from the day before and his boxers. "Wherever would you get that idea?" Oh, perhaps because Sirius had been sleeping only ten minutes ago and James had treated Remus rather icily until he had mentioned Lily Evans. But Sirius wasn't one to dwell on why it was a bad time, he was better-off sticking to the fact that Remus was there and that was that. "Well don't stand way over there, Moony, come and sit by me."

"_Moony_?" Remus said, unable to hide his grin as he made his way over to Sirius' bed, his remark of one word speaking louder than anything else he could have said. He sounded incredulous and amused all at the same time, something that only Remus could pull off while keeping an air of a courteous young man about him. Sirius often lost this, his own brash personality taking over the perfect, cultivated one his family had strived to instill in him.

Patting the bed in front of him, Sirius grinned. Remus, who seemed to be getting used to the attitude of his newest companion, sat down across from him without any hesitation. "Quite simple. You played the Moonlight Sonata, I approved of it," putting a hand over his heart to signal this, "and thus Moony was born. Tell me you like it, humor me if you must. I'll call you it no matter what." A slight shrug of his shoulders.

"I wouldn't put it past you," Remus admitted sensibly. Sirius smiled, appeased, for reasons he wasn't quite sure of himself, that the other boy was catching onto what his personality consisted of. "I suppose I'll just have to get used to it. Good thing that I don't have many other friends or else you would probably have all of them calling me by that name, wouldn't you?" Every word he spoke was an attempt to be critical towards Sirius, just as every word failed when his smile snuck past his words.

"Wrong," Sirius said, shaking his head with a smirk. "I'm rather possessive and it took me a while to think that one up. So you're completely wrong there." For a moment he felt completely victorious with his line of thinking. What he said was the truth; he was a very possessive person, even when it came to alternate names he had thought up. But his glorious moment was killed when Remus broke into a fit of laughter, leaning over. "It's true, though! I wouldn't," Sirius said, frantically trying to fix the situation.

Remus reached out through his laughter and put his hand on Sirius' knee. "I know, Sirius," he said, "I just find it funny that you're possessive over someone you have only known for a few weeks. Really, it's flattering and you put on a good show, but you don't have to pretend to care about me that much." The words hit Sirius hard; glass shards stabbing him places he didn't even know existed.

Actions may speak louder than words, but the combination of the two can be deafening. Sirius grabbed Remus' hand from where it was on his knee and looked at the smaller boy earnestly, saying words without thinking, which frequently leads to words being more truthful than ever. "It's not a show, Remus. I do care about you," he said, sincerely, the tone of his voice surprising even himself. Remus began to blush, but Sirius ignored this face and went on, "That's not something you should doubt. I've known people for a year that I don't give a fuck about. Since when does it matter how long you've known someone?"

"Ah," Remus said, quietly. His eyes were on his hand and, consequently, Sirius'. Although he was trying his best to cover it with his other hand it was obvious that his face was turning quite red and Sirius quickly let go of his hand, realizing that he was the cause of Remus' embarrassment. "I – yes, I believe you are correct about that. I tell you more than I tell Lily and I've known her longer than I've known you."

Suddenly Sirius was grinning at this news. "Do you _really_?" he asked, leaning forward and drumming his hands on the mattress. "That really is quite exciting. Tell me more about you then. I'd love to know everything." And just as fast as Remus had regained his composure he lost it again, stuttering out his refusal and turning red once more. "Oh, please, Moony?" It was times like these that his charming voice and smile came in handy, even if he didn't use either of the attributes as much as he should.

"Well there is, ah, there is _one _thing you should probably know about me," Remus said slowly, keeping his eyes on the maroon pillow that lay across the room. When he finally looked back up at Sirius he met an expectant pair of eyes, ready for whatever he had to say. "But you can't tell anyone. Last time I told someone this, I really trusted him, and it ended up ruining everything." Whatever it was Sirius was now serious interested, because he was sure this was why Remus had professed to have no friends at his old school.

"You can trust me," he said softly, meeting Remus' eyes to show that he was being truthful. Remus was playing with the sleeves of his sweater, pulling them down so far that they covered his hands and he buried his face in the material before muttering out something that Sirius couldn't understand. "I'm sorry, what?" Remus moved his hands down further so that they were only covering his mouth and spoke once more, slightly louder, but the meaning was still lost in translation. "Just spit it out, Remus, it's not going to be a big deal."

"I beg to differ," Remus said, his hands still in front of his mouth, but he was speaking loud enough now that his words were understandable. "I'm, erm, I'm not – I'm gay." There was a profusely silent moment during which Remus covered up his face with his hands again and Sirius was at a loss for words. He wasn't sure what to say; because of all things he hadn't been expecting this. When, at last, Remus showed his eyes again, he quietly said, "You want me to leave?"

"No, no," Sirius said quickly. It was an involuntary reaction, because he really didn't want Remus to go, but he didn't mean to say the words in such a way that it almost sounded desperate. "I just – does this mean the whole not believing in love thing is a lie?" He was definitely starting to sound desperate and he couldn't figure out why that was. What did he care if Remus believed in love or who he believed he could share it with? It didn't change a thing on Sirius' end of the friendship.

It was comforting to see Remus look happy, his hands slipping down to just below his beaming smile. "No, that's still true," he said, much to Sirius' surprise. "At least, it is until I find someone who makes me believe in it. It's more of a matter of, erm, attraction than love right now." Surprisingly he was talking much easier now, although his face still showed traces of embarrassment.

"Makes sense to me," Sirius said, with a light smile. "Do you want to go to the library or something?"

"Wait – you want to…you aren't going to tell anyone?" Remus was taken aback by this notion. Sirius could understand this, but was almost pleased by the fact. Of course he was surprised, but part of him was almost pleased at the news. But, he ignored this fact as he did many others.

"What's the point in telling anyone? I don't benefit from it." They both smiled for different reasons. Sirius because he knew something about Remus that no one else at Bromsgrove did. Remus because he knew that Sirius' last words were a lie, and that there was a possibility there was a lot more to his acceptance than he was letting on.

* * *

"Please, Remus? Just once or twice, at most three times," Sirius said, grabbing Remus' arm and trying to pull him away from the doors of the library and towards the school. "I'll never ask you to do it again." Remus stood his ground, though and reached out towards the library's door, his hand falling inches short as Sirius struggled to pull the surprisingly resistant young man away.

When Sirius was tugging on his arm hard enough Remus stopped trying to pull away and they both stumbled backwards, Remus falling into Sirius' arms. "I've heard that one before," he muttered as Sirius found himself blushing at the circumstances. Remus pushed himself away and raised his eyebrows, saying, "Besides, aren't you the one who suggested this?"

"But I want to hear the piano, Moony, the _piano_." Sirius was in a near whine now and fully aware of it, knowing that he sounded childish and immature, but not caring one bit as he latched onto Remus arm once more. Although he had been the one to suggest going to the library he had thought that Remus wouldn't be so against a quick detour to play a piece or two for him, but he obviously was not in favor of such an idea.

"Well we did that last night and we have a test in History tomorrow anyway, Sirius, so it's really better for both of us if we go to the library instead," Remus pointed out, this time not pulling away from Sirius, rather leading him towards the doors. Sirius allowed for this to happen, though not without a sigh, thinking about the fact that he hadn't eaten yet and it was getting awfully close to lunch. Missing a meal to hear Remus play was one thing, in his mind at least, but not eating in favor of studying was something he only did in a desperate situation.

Apparently he now also did it when Remus Lupin insisted that he do it. Unlike other times he spent in the library this time he was actually getting something done. Remus was forcing him to study and the only reason Sirius was putting up with it was because, for various reasons he ignored and some that he admitted to, he liked to be around the boy. "I do have one question," Remus said, interrupting Sirius' inner-monologue. "Do you think it's…weird?"

Although Sirius knew what he meant and knew what his answer was he bit his tongue for a moment, wanting to approach this delicately, but not succeeding very well. "Well, yeah." Remus' face fell slightly. "Not in a bad way, exactly. It's just that you're the only person I know who's – who doesn't like girls. It's a good kind of weird, it adds a bit of spice to your life, you know. Not that you were totally bland before, but even you can admit that there _was _some room for improvement."

First he got a punch to the shoulder and then Remus leaned in over the books they had spread over the table, things that Sirius would forget in a matter of days, and did something he would always remember. Planted a carefree kiss on Sirius' cheek, as small as it was, shocking Sirius enough to keep his hand on his cheek for a few minutes afterwards. "Sorry," Remus mumbled, his face once more turning red, his hands moving towards his face just as they had earlier, his expression mortified at what he had just done.

"Don't be," Sirius said, reaching out a grabbing one of his hands, holding onto it tightly. They both looked down at their hands and then back at one another, this time, not letting go. A few tables away someone was watching them, over the flimsy guise of reading a book, disapproving eyes looking over the situation as they the entire time they had followed the two.

* * *

"Where have you been?"

"Hello to you too, _mum_," Sirius said, giving James an odd look as he entered the dorm room. It was a few minutes past nine at night. He was lucky to have made it back to his room without being caught. He took off his trousers, letting them fall carelessly to the ground. He sat on the edge of his bed, the room scarcely lit by the lamp on the nightstand between the two beds. "What?" he said, getting tired of James' cold glare at him.

"What do you mean what?" James retaliated, crossing his arms over his chest. He sat in his bed, leaning against the wooden headboard, his History book and notes spread out in front of him, the first time Sirius remembered seeing him study in ages. "I saw you for lunch and then you were gone. What I mean is: what happened to Sunday afternoons and the fact that we always hang out together on them?"

"Oh," Sirius said, feeling the color leaving his face. Somehow he had forgotten this fact. Ever since their first year of Senior School together, the first year that they had become really close, they would spend Sunday afternoon doing nothing, the last hours before school started again. They had done this for over two years now and there was really no excuse for Sirius forgetting this fact. "I'm sorry," he began, "Moony and I were – "

James glared at his words, and even in the darkness it was a menacing look. "_Moony_?" But it wasn't like Remus' voice at all, even if it was the same word. This remark was full of fury; complete annoyance at what James had easily figured out was a name Sirius had given to Remus. After all, it had been Sirius who had named them all years back. James wasn't stupid and he knew what was going on. "So what is this? You're replacing me?"

"What?" Sirius asked, disbelievingly, not sure how James had come to this conclusion. It was as if he had come through all of the possible scenarios and picked out the worst of them all. "That's not what's going on at all, Prongs. How did you – how could I ever do that?" Sirius was literally shocked, watching as James' expression didn't change at all, if anything it got worse.

"Can you not call me that?" James said. Sirius heard the real feelings now, underneath his icy cold cover was someone who was actually hurt by what was going on. And Sirius tried to reach out to his best mate, feeling terrible for what he had done, or rather what he had completely forgotten to do, but James pulled away from him. "Just – get the fuck away, alright?"

Sirius retreated back to his bed, feeling anger building up inside of himself. He rummaged through the drawer of the nightstand to find his pack of cigarettes, muttering livid thoughts to himself all the while. When he had the pack in his hand and was pulling a cigarette out he said, audibly, "If anything, it's that goddamn redhead who's ruining things anyway." As he put the cigarette to his lips, searching his pockets for his matchbook, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

What convinced him, though, was James, moving faster than Sirius ever thought he could, lashing out at him, quite literally, his hand hitting him hard on the cheek. The cigarette fell from his open mouth and James stomped on it where it landed. Neither one of them spoke, their expressions saying it all. They both looked astonished, neither one of them really grasping what had just happened. Sirius stood up, but didn't say anything. James averted his eyes, but made no move to apologize.

"Right then," Sirius said, and that was all. He couldn't think of anything else, but to leave the room and make his way across the House, thinking of one thing and one thing only and not understanding why. He remembered Remus mentioning who he roomed with once, a boy named Michael Carlisle, someone that Sirius had known for years and, luckily in this situation, also knew where his room was.

After several minutes of winding through hallways and past doors he reached the room he was sure belonged to Michael and, therefore, Remus as well. He raised his hand to knock on the door and couldn't bring himself to do it. His hand dropped to his side and he sighed, knowing that it wasn't right to do what he was doing. Remus didn't need to hear about his problems, no matter how much Sirius wanted to tell him about them. But he was selfish, by nature, and he gave in and knocked. "Oi! Who is – Black?" Michael Carlisle answered the door, grimacing out into the hallway. "What d'you want?"

"Remus," Sirius said automatically, not caring that he had woken up his classmate. He watched as Michael grumbled and left the door, presumably waking up Remus as he did so. Sirius bit his lip and reached his hand up to his cheek. It still slightly stung from the slap he had received, but it was also the cheek that Remus had kissed. An odd mixture of feelings that he didn't understand washed over him.

This was interrupted by Remus walking into the hallway, seeing Sirius' face and closing the door behind him. "What's the matter?" he asked, looking genuinely worried. Sirius did say anything, instead he attacked Remus, wrapping his arms around him and laying his head on his shoulder, feeling tears well up in his eyes. He didn't want Remus to see him in this state even though he knew that Remus was smart enough to figure out what was going on.

Somehow he managed to keep his feelings inside of himself, as he always did, but he didn't release Remus from his grasp, instead noticing the scars that were on the other boy's chest. Remus' shirt was much too big for him and had fallen off of his shoulder when Sirius had grabbed him. "What are those?" he asked, sleepily, looking up at Remus, who was looking at him with eyes full of curiosity.

"Nothing," he said. "Come on, Sirius, you have to get back to your room before you get caught out after lights out." Remus forced Sirius to let go of him and began to walk down the hallway. Sirius didn't follow for a minute, but slowly walked after him. When they were at Sirius' dorm room, Remus said, "Was this my fault?" He reached his hand out and lightly touched Sirius' cheek, which must have still shown the mark of James' assault on his face.

"Don't worry about it," Sirius mumbled, reaching his own hand up to put it on Remus'. He didn't know why he did it, or at least he overlooked the reason why, concentrating only on the blush that fell over Remus' face. They stood there in silence for a moment and then Remus suddenly withdrew his hand, looking away and then backing up a few steps.

"I know it's probably easy," he said, his voice tinged with sadness that made Sirius cringe, "but don't do things like that when you don't really feel that way about me." Sirius opened his mouth, but Remus didn't give him a chance. "I'll talk to you tomorrow, just don't – don't do that just because you know you _can_." With that he was gone and Sirius was left with only the thoughts of what he had wanted to say, fresh in his mind.

_What if I did feel that way?_

**A/N**: So I started writing this, and then my tummy started hurting and my wrist like…died. But I had gotten to James being on top of Sirius, so I sent it to my friend. And she thought it was…well it's not. Okay, it _could_ be construed as Sirius/James, but that wasn't the point, I just love writing James as kind of a jerk, but a good friend…which I guess is an excuse for sitting on his best mate? By the way, I know some people who read this story also read my other one, Drunken Deals. I know that hasn't been updated in a while. But I have the last chapter for that almost done and once it gets proofed and everything it will be up. I've been super busy with school ending and a whole new story (I love to multi task) with Rem and Siri as pirates. Fun abounds. Oh and I hope the fluffiness didn't kill anyone. Review even if you hate it.


	5. Allegretto

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: Once again, the Moonlight Sonata is here. Movement Two, Allegretto, you can find it on my profile. Let's see, don't have much to say. Made my livejournal friends only. Kind of a waste of time. I've been watching and reading Ouran High School Host Club way too much for my own good. And I have something of substance to say in the Author's Note at the end of this chapter. That's a first, right? :D And I finally got the calendar for this figured out. The first chapter started off a month into the first semester, on October 6th, and going through that makes this chapter begin on October 24th. So proud of myself for figuring all that out. I didn't even mean too…but does this mean I have to do something for Halloween? If anyone wants me to, just let me know. (Although I'm well aware it's not as exuberantly celebrated in England as it is in the States)

**Chapter Five**: Allegretto

He couldn't play the piano. At seven years old his mother had tried, in vain, to get him interested in playing a musical instrument. Violin hadn't gone as well as she had hoped, so her second choice had been the piano. But for Sirius, he got no joy out of playing the music. He liked to hear it, liked to close his eyes and just listen to the sound that others could produce. Perhaps it was part of his selfish upbringing that he expected someone to play for him, but it was something more than that. Sirius liked the music to take him away, and if he had to concentrate on making it, then that effect wasn't possible.

Yet here he sat, at the grand piano, trying to remember which key created which note and how it was that people could multitask so easily between looking at the notes on the paper, remembering which key corresponded and then playing them in such a way that it created music. He was failing and he knew it. But he had to hear this music and he didn't know what else to do. Not since the events of Sunday night.

Although it was already Friday he hadn't talked to James since their fight. Remus had seemed out of it for the past few days and continually refused to play the piano for him or even do anything with him. Instead Sirius had seen him with Lily several times over the week, igniting a flame of jealousy that Sirius was unable to ignore, but declined to question, taking it at face value rather than delving into the why.

The situation was somewhat like a broken vase. You could shatter it beyond repair but there was always more room for damage, right down to the very atoms it was made of. You could destroy the vase until it was unrecognizable and still be able to grind the shards of glass with your heel. Essentially, Sirius was broken into pieces, but he was still waiting for the final blow.

Concentrating as much as he was – Sirius' feeble attempts to play the notes on the page were taking more attention than he would have thought necessary – he wasn't aware of his surroundings and consequently didn't notice when the door to the piano room opened. It wasn't until he was actually joined at the bench and arms were thrown around his torso and he heard the small noises of someone crying that he became fully conscious that he was no longer alone. "You did this to me, just let me do it now, Sirius." After all, how could he ignore the muffled voice of Remus Lupin, hiding his emotions in the same way that Sirius had almost a week ago?

Over that week Sirius had come to have a loose grasp on just exactly how he felt. Usually he was not one to be very in tune with his feelings. He tended to follow what James or another one of his mates said, ignoring his own intentions in any situations, convincing even himself that he had no other sentiment towards circumstances besides the ones that his friends did. James never stuck with a girl for too long, so he went above and beyond that, spreading through the female population like wildfire. James was smart, like him, but had no work ethic, was fine with above average, but not outstanding grades, so Sirius took it a step further and settled at painstakingly average. It wasn't that he was looking for acceptance. He had that, he didn't need to change himself to be accepted by the people around him, his family name and genes did that for him.

But if Sirius took one step in the wrong direction, did even one thing against what people expected him to, it was over. Now, Sirius could stand losing the girls and the guys – each gender trying to impress him for different reasons. In the end it was James that really mattered. They were inseparable, two different people that acted as one, brothers without sharing blood, but sharing more in common than Sirius did with his real younger brother. Losing James was like losing a family member.

Remus was a completely different story. They weren't brothers; far from it, in fact. They had only known each other for nearly three weeks now and yet there was an innate sense in Sirius that this was all he really needed. The people he really cared about had always come crashing into his life like this. For James and him it had been running into each other when they were both late to class, and for Remus and him it had been a mishap in the library. Completely events by chance, but both of them were fates that Sirius could not dismiss as coincidence. And what was it Lily had said the other day.

* * *

"Star-crossed lovers. It's a little thing called destiny, Sirius, though I wouldn't expect _you _to know anything about it." Lily Evans had been even more infuriatingly superior lately, conceivably motivated by her heightened presence in Sirius' life and the lives of his friends. It was hard enough to lose them, but even worse to lose them to the one person that he really, truly could not stand. He was one who held a grudge long past its expiration date, letting it turn sour until the end of time.

Suppressing his anger he said, in the politest tone that he could manage, "I took Shakespearian Literature, thank you, Evans." Although he couldn't boast getting something out of that class besides a few well-mannered appearing ladies, who were anything but once he got their prestigious uniforms off. Besides that, they hadn't even gotten a glimpse at _Romeo and Juliet_, for their teacher found its commercial value a downsizing of the real merit of Shakespeare's other works. "What I want to know is why you're comparing _us _to those two fools. Aren't you and James a better representation of such a story?"

He grinned triumphantly as he watched Lily's composure falter at the words, her face turning red with embarrassment and rage. "How many times do I have to tell you that _Remus' _idea and the only reason I did anything with that narcissistic boy is because he needed a way to talk to you alone?" Sirius considered being a complete nuisance and telling her that he needed to hear it quite a few more times, but didn't, her anger subsiding any need within himself to say such a thing. "You two are just too perfect for the idea. Although I wouldn't say _lovers _exactly. A star-crossed friendship, if you will."

As if the idea needed a downgrade from it's already flimsy footing in the world of analogies. Sirius snickered as she said these words, leaning back so that he was dependant completely on the wall of the corridor. They stood together, in-between classes, a strange sight to all who passed them, Lily frowning at his relaxed position and keeping herself as proper as she could. "I'm sure that's what Will had in mind for Romeo and Juliet, Evans, a nice little friendship. You should clean up your collection of parallels between life and literature; they're getting a bit dusty." This time Lily didn't get angry, in fact this time she smiled at him.

"I'm not the one who's denying things because he's blind to the situation. I know more about what's going on than you do at this point." She had a good point. It was Thursday and both Remus and James talked to the redhead more than they did the raven-haired boy. "This isn't going to fix itself. You can't just stand idly by and pretend that this is going to be like every other time something goes wrong. Life doesn't repair itself; you need to help it along."

Sirius knew she was right, but didn't have the heart to admit it. "I don't expect things to fix themselves. James is my best mate and we're not going to stay mad at each other." He refused to dwell on what was going on with Remus. They talked and he persuaded his mind to believe it was the same as it had been before, although anyone could see that things were different between them. Some time while they were sleeping on that Sunday night a wall had been constructed between them and a cold front had settled in. They were back to chance meetings around campus and in the library.

"You know full well that I'm not talking about James," Lily said, causing Sirius to glare at her, telling her that he did know this. "James and you are both stubborn, but you've also both grown up together, enough to the point where one fight won't kill what you have. But if you think that what you have with Remus is going to be fine without being attended to, then you're wrong. I know you're immature, Sirius, but even you must realize that Remus – well, he _needs _you." There was something she was hiding now and Sirius stood up straighter, raising his eyebrows.

"If he needed me so much why would he be avoiding me?" he pointed out, crossing his arms and taking a step forward so that his accusing face was only a few inches away from Lily's. They looked rather identical, irritation obvious on their features, dislike for the other in her green eyes as well as in his grey ones. People who passed by them all had one thought on their minds, all of them used to the two, who, though rarely were they seen together, were always in some sort of fight when they were.

Then Lily said the words that made him falter, the final blow before she walked away, leaving him defeated. "I think the real question here should be why are _you _avoiding your feelings, Sirius?" But she didn't wait for an answer; she never did, just turned on her heel and left him to hurry to his next class, unable to concentrate on his instructor's words, his mind more focused on what Lily had said than learning how to say it in French.

Somewhere in-between pretending to write down notes and pausing to feign a look up to the board, he came to his pathetic conclusion. He knew it wasn't all there was to the condition of his feelings, but for someone who seldom thought about these sorts of things, it was a start. He didn't know what it was, or why for that matter, but he wanted to be around Remus and wanted to be there for him. Not in the way he wanted to be around James, no, it was completely unlike how he felt about his best mate.

It wasn't a matter of the fact that he really did care for both of them – it was the way that he cared that was the diverging factor. James was his friend, his brother, his partner in crime. Remus was something he couldn't define, but that he wanted to understand. A prized possession that was just out of his reach, because he didn't comprehend why it appealed to him so.

* * *

"Alright, don't worry about it," he said, putting his arms around Remus, the smaller boy was shaking for some reason that Sirius couldn't discern and wasn't going to worry about for the moment. Sirius' face was so close to Remus' hair, and it only felt right to reach one hand up and put it to the soft hair. Remus shivered at the touch – or maybe he just simply moved and it had nothing to do with Sirius touching him.

Though they sat there for what felt like forever without talking it was a comfortable silence. Something that Sirius scarcely had the chance to enjoy. It was his own fault; he liked to hear himself talk and often destroyed moments like these without a second thought. But he let this one live on, although he knew it was once again for his own selfish intent. Regardless of whether Remus was alright with it or not, Sirius wasn't thinking about that. His mind was affixed on the fact that he wanted this.

When Remus did finally push away from him, albeit gently, Sirius found himself feeling terrible. Unlike Sirius' tears on Sunday, Remus' were not gone by a long shot. It wasn't as if he was sobbing, he was keeping the tears held back, but his eyes were watery and if he lost control he would be back to his original state in no time, Sirius was sure. And, as he sat back, not looking Sirius in the eye, he exposed what was most likely the cause of his emotions.

"Who did this?" Sirius asked, reaching his hand out to lightly touch the bruise that was beginning to form underneath Remus' left eye. He touched the injury, lightly, so as not to cause anymore harm, even as he felt himself growing angrier by the second, trying to figure out who would do such a thing. The first person that came to mind, though he didn't want to admit it, was James. Much as it pained him to think about, James was the type of person to lash out at whatever was threatening him, and he might have seen Remus as threat to the friendship he had with Sirius. He didn't have the guts to outright ask though – if it was him. Sirius wasn't sure if he _wanted _to know if it was James.

"I – he said…," but Remus wouldn't finish, wouldn't look at Sirius, turned his attention to the piano, changed the subject. "Can I play for you, just for a moment?" Of course he could, of course he always could. Sirius didn't even have to tell him that. And he played the Second Movement, much more lively than the first. The music juxtaposed with the aura around them to the point where it was almost too much to bear. Notes came together jubilantly, while things were falling apart all around them. The two connected so well, but it was pulling everything else in their world apart.

Sirius' head fell to Remus' shoulder, unsure of what else to do. The music wasn't done, but it stopped. Remus' hands fell to grip the edge of the bench and they sat in silence, neither one of them able to find words to say. Sirius had a new fear, but he didn't want to voice it. "He said he was your brother and that he saw us. I – told him we were just friends, but he kept saying that he saw us. I didn't know what to do, and he wasn't alone, but I was. Normally I could have, perhaps, held my own against him, but it was…there was no way." So Remus voiced it for him. Out of all the people that Sirius knew, he should have expected his brother the most.

Regulus Black was not one to forgive, and whatever he had seen had been enough to make him angry to the point where he was willing to use violence. They were family and family stuck together. Blood was thicker than water and when threatened it was vital to spill the thicker liquid. The Black family taught them to use power to fix the corruptions within their own family, and as far as Sirius could tell, this was Regulus' motive. It was only a matter of time before he would be hearing from Regulus; he was sure of this fact.

"What did he see?" Sirius asked, quietly, even though he was quite sure he knew what Regulus had seen. For weeks now he had been pushing things to the back of his mind, hiding them from his own conscious. Ignoring every single feeling that managed to surface in his mind had become customary for him and as much as he didn't want to face them right now he realized that he had to eventually and that now might just be the best time to do so.

"Us. The library. Maybe more, I don't know, it wasn't a very in depth conversation. He seemed more in the mood to do this." Remus' hand mocked a punch at his cheek, missing the bruised skin by mere centimeters, a grim smile on his face. "He told me I shouldn't go running for you, that you wouldn't help me. But I'd like to think that I know you a tinge better than that." The hand fell, but the grim smile remained, as he added "Perhaps he was right though."

"Are you blind?" Sirius asked; his voice vehement. These words caught Remus off guard and he looked at the other boy in surprise as he spoke. "Honestly, I've never met someone so oblivious to their surroundings than you are, Moony." He saw, then, for the first time, the blush on Remus' cheeks when he called him by the nickname. "Maybe if you looked around for a minute instead of at your books you would notice that I'm always here to help you," he said, placing his hand on Remus'.

To his surprise Remus pulled away. "I've noticed that, I'm not completely blind, Sirius. What you need to be more conscious of is the fact that you're dismissing your own feelings and it's affecting other people." He looked away again so that Sirius couldn't see his face. "Particularly me, and if you can't see that, then _you're _the blind one in this case, not me."

"You sound like Lily," Sirius muttered. And suddenly it all made sense. Lily was well aware of it and so was Remus, and Sirius always had been to a certain point, ever since that first day in the library. How strange it was that the one person he had always thought life would be better without, that god-awful redhead, was the one person who helped him to connect everything together. To pull Remus towards himself, and hold the smaller boy in his arms and to blatantly place a kiss on his forehead. "I'm seeing just a bit more clearly now," he murmured.

His feelings had advanced to ones that he didn't understand, but knew was necessary. Inside himself was the sense that above all, Remus was someone he was responsible for. Someone that he wanted to protect and care for; sheltering him from all of the problems in the world. Yet Sirius wasn't sure what it was, but as he held Remus, who accepted this, burying his head in Sirius' chest, he became sure that there was something more wrong with Remus that the bruise on his face.

For whatever reason, it felt as if the fragile boy that sat next to him at the moment was only so far from death.

**A/N**: I actually have something interesting to say here for once. A lot of people keep telling me that I have all the characters really, well, in character in this story. I don't agree or disagree with that. This story is actually intended to have them as most fans have come to imagine them during their school days. Fact is, I don't think this is what they were like. Not exactly. Let me explain. To me, it's pretty much impossible to pinpoint one personality for the people of the MWPP era. All Jo gives us is: what other people thought of them, a brief look at flashbacks to the time and, of course, their future personalities. Opinions on others can often be false. A few pages worth of what they were like during a few events can't ever explain them fully. And while their personalities later on in life are some indication as to what they were like when they were younger, everyone changes over the years. So, basically, I don't think you _can _be wrong with how you portray the MWPP era characters, as long as you stick to the basics we know about them. There's more to James than his ego, more to Remus than his books, more to Sirius than his handsome face and so on. We don't know what they were like as young adults, so can you really judge how someone writes them? Just my opinion. Oh, and for those of you bored to sleep by this, time to wake up. (:

My god, am I not dramatic? Review even if you hate it.


	6. Pace Yourself

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: I got total inspiration from a Cookleta fic I was reading. Actually, I'm not sure how this chapter got the point that it did…but it did. And, you know, I'm alright with where it went. Now you…person reading this…may or may not be happy. It's kind of jumbled because I wrote it over the course of a few days, kind of drifting in and out of the story...hope it's not too bad.

**Chapter Six**: Pace Yourself

Sirius woke up with a smile on his face.

That wasn't completely accurate. He woke up, blinked a bit and had the overwhelming feeling that he had some dream that he couldn't quite remember. Something about Remus in the piano room; and then he smiled. Because, as far as he could remember that hadn't been a dream. Besides, Sirius didn't have dreams like that. Well, maybe once or twice, but certainly not _that_. Certainly nothing about Remus or how he felt about him or anything of that nature. But whatever the state of his memories – dream or otherwise – Sirius woke with a smile.

James did not. He woke up as Sirius was getting dressed, right as he was pulling up his trousers in fact. Neither one of them spoke, but James mumbled something as he was trying to get his tie to cooperate. He never could get a handle on what it took to put on the accessory, and for a moment everything seemed alright, because James pulled on Sirius' arm and held out the tie to him and Sirius did as he asked, although he could easily admit to having pulled on the tie a bit too harshly than was needed.

"Thanks," James muttered. And then he was gone, out the door and leaving Sirius alone in the dorm room, once again reminded that everything was not all right. There was a rift being drawn between the two best friends, a joint action done between a redhead and a piano player. The thing was, Sirius and James had never fought before. They both had tempers but they usually found it much more enjoyable to get angry at other people and Sirius wasn't quite sure how to fix things. So everything was not alright, but he was still smiling.

He was feeling rather reckless and didn't even bother with his blazer, pushing up the sleeves of his white dress shirt to expose his pale forearms. It was cold out, as expected in late October, but he wasn't worried about the weather. In fact, he wasn't worried about anything. Or just rather good at pretending. Either way he was in a good mood that morning. Anyone who saw him might have found it a bit unsettling, since he was a typically not a morning person.

The thing was – not only had the events of the night before been good, but Sirius had also slept last night. Not slept as in a few sporadic minutes here in there, slept as in, closed his eyes and woken up hours later completely rested. Hadn't he just been tossing and turning a few nights before? But that was the thing, that was _it_. He didn't have anything to think about at night anymore. There was James, but as Lily had pointed out that was bound to fix itself when they got past their stubborn defiance.

And Sirius smiled even more when he found Remus Lupin, doing what he did best. "Aren't you forgetting some, ah, some parts of your uniform?" Remus asked, closing his book as Sirius approached him. It was the first time that Sirius had seen that kind of look on Remus' face, almost appraising, trying to keep things serious, but not really managing that feat.

"Good question, no real answer, it's a wonderful day, I don't want to bothered with such things as blazers," Sirius explained, flippantly, waving his hand in the air. Remus broke his composure and smiled at this and Sirius nearly blushed before he caught himself. He had to remind himself over and over again, because he was going to fast. "Now, I don't know about you, Moony, but I'm just _dying _to get to History class." He threw his arm around Remus' shoulder and, to his surprise, Remus just laughed and walked along with him. So maybe he wasn't moving too fast and he could still smile, but…

_Pace yourself._

"Well hello there, Mister Black, Mister Lupin."

"Headmaster! It's been ages," Sirius said with a flamboyant grin. The Headmaster of Bromsgrove was rather flamboyant himself, sporting a long silver beard and matching hair, with streaks of recluse auburn mixed in, always wearing some mad outfit that looked more like a costume than anything. Dumbledore didn't look anything like a Headmaster, but he was the best the school had had in ages, the main reason the school was no longer an elitist boarding school, offering scholarships to less privileged students.

"Erm, hello, Sir," Remus mumbled, looking amused at the state of their Headmaster's dress. If Sirius hadn't been so used to it, he probably would have felt the same way. It was almost as if he didn't understand what constituted 'normal' to most people, but it was more likely that he just didn't care, with his shocking green sweater and pinstripe trousers. As always, he wore the maroon tie around his neck, despite the fact that he really didn't need to with the sweater. Sirius was unfazed, he had seen worse, or better depending on your opinion of the Headmaster, but he was still smiling.

"How very interesting," Dumbledore said softly. For a moment Sirius had to do it again; block out his urge to blush, because the Headmaster was eyeing Sirius' arm around Remus' shoulders, or at least it seemed he was, but then he wandered off, down the hallway, leaving the two to silence. Honestly, Sirius mused, their Headmaster could be _such _the drama queen sometimes.

"Would you believe," Remus said, a small smile on his face, "that he's the only reason I'm in this place?" Sirius supposed it shouldn't really have come as much of a shock, but it did and his expression told Remus that fact. "Yeah, I'm a scholarship student. Actually, I wasn't even going to come here until I got invited for an interview to possibly get the scholarship. There's no way I could pay for the tuition." Meaning, Sirius thought to himself, almost laughably, the person who was basically responsible for them meeting was currently talking to the phoenix on the art mural down the hall.

Leave it to Lily to ruin the moment. She approached them out of nowhere, although Hell was a fair guess, and said, brashly, "You two should probably get to class. I know you probably don't realize this, Black, but school is a place to learn, not to play with people's feelings." Sirius was completely in the dark as to what she was talking about and what her somber tone meant. The redhead looked rather fiery today. "And where _is _your blazer?"

"On my dorm room floor, where it ought to be," he answered simply, once again putting his arm around Remus' shoulders and smiling defiantly at Lily's glare. "We don't have class for about ten minutes now, Evans. Would you care to calm down or are we going to have to handle this outside?" He felt Remus elbow him in the ribs, but didn't mind much. He wasn't going to stop fighting with Lily, not for Remus and not for anybody else. It was a mutual feeling of distrust between the two of them that was not to ever be changed, even years from now and Sirius was certain of that fact.

All he got in response was a deep sigh; Lily's green eyes brimming with anger, but soon glazed over by some other emotion that Sirius couldn't read as she turned to Remus. "I don't know how you manage to be around him, honestly," she said, as if Sirius wasn't right there. The aforementioned young man snorted at her words and instead leaned his own head on Remus', reveling at those irritated green eyes. "Oh, honestly, Black, grow up."

"Right, because a certain redhead is setting such a great example for all of us over here in Neverland," Sirius said pleasantly, his voice syrupy sweet. The fact that he wasn't getting peeved at her words seemed to be annoying Lily to an even greater extent than he had imagined and she smiled thinly at him. Sirius beamed back at her, unabashed by her actions. In fact, his sex-starved mind had him slightly convinced that she attractive at this moment.

"Hmph," Lily said in reply, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "I'll see you later, Remus, and as for you, Black" – she suddenly pulled him away from Remus, startling him out of his thoughts and spoke directly in his ear – "if you dare to hurt him, you'll be close enough to dead that you'll wish you were at your life's end." Her voice wasn't furious or commanding, in fact, it was full of compassion, making it obvious that she didn't mean what she said, but she meant for Remus to not get hurt.

But Sirius wasn't really paying attention to what the inflections in her tone meant, no, he was more focused on the fact that he hadn't been this near a girl in weeks and, admittedly, he missed it. He came much too close from making a real advance on her lips, but instead whispered back to her, "Wouldn't dream of hurting him, love," and gave her a satisfied smile as he back away from her blushing face. So maybe he hadn't shagged anyone in a while, but he certainly hadn't lost his touch.

Sirius quite imagined that if he had been watching himself at that moment he would be exponentially impressed by his own prowess, but Remus did not seem to hold the same sentiment, his amber eyes looking oddly hollow as they made their way to their first lesson. Sirius tried to make small talk, but he just ended up stumbling over his words and not getting much in response. Once they were to class the two parted and Sirius found that, for the first time today, he did not feel like smiling.

* * *

The next few days weren't much better. Sirius had succeeded only in making a fool of himself and had absolutely nothing to show for it. His brash actions had only acquired silence from one of the few people who was actually still willing to talk to him. He was being forced to reignite old friendships, of which there weren't many. Girls had mostly been used up and gave him disgusted looks if he so much as looked at them (as if they hadn't enjoyed it or something mad like that). As for the male population, Sirius had only ever had James and that had always been enough.

James still couldn't get how in the world he was supposed to put that damn maroon tie on. Every morning he would spend a few minutes in front of the mirror trying to get the hang of it, but in the end he would wordlessly walk over to Sirius and they would share a quick moment in which Sirius hope that, maybe, they would exchange a few words and slowly get back to the way things were. James wasn't one to instigate such a thing and, quite frankly, neither was Sirius, but he took the chance.

Desperate times called for desperate measure, as it were.

As he took the silken maroon fabric into his hands Sirius feverish searched his mind for something to say. "Lily," he finally decided, "is being quite difficult lately. To me at least. How's she treating you?" Difficult wasn't exactly the right word to use. A total and complete bitch was probably more accurate in Sirius' mind, but he had an inkling that while those words might very well be true, they were definitely not of the sort that he should be speaking. He was on thin ice as it was, no need to stop playing safe while he was still in danger of drowning.

"Oi! Tell me about it, mate," James gushed, to his surprise. Something told him that James, in all his pride, had been waiting for Sirius to say something simply so he wouldn't be the first to cave in. Sirius sorely missed the complex person that was James Potter, and didn't even attempt to hide his smile as he continued with the tie, at a slower pace now as James spoke. "It's like, my God, who are you and what have you done with Lily Evans? Don't you think she's just acting completely absurd? I can't even get near her what with Lupin always being around."

Sirius fumbled slightly at the mention of Remus, but it didn't seem that James noticed, even as Sirius' face flushed. Not only because of the boy's name but also because he knew he was at fault for Lily's change in demeanor. Lily was usually much more calm and serene than she had been lately, she certainly had a temper, but it was like her personality had completely changed to center around her complete dislike for anyone who hurt her friends. "Erm, yeah, I've noticed," Sirius mumbled absently, finishing with the tie and taking a few steps away when he was done with it.

"Hey, you know, I'm – well, that is, I shouldn't have lashed out like that on Sunday," James said, his voice terribly quiet and forced. Sirius laughed inwardly at his friend's inability to just come right out and say that he was apologizing. He knew James well enough to get the gist of what he was saying. If a bridge had been burned between them it was now apparent that another one was being built, albeit slowly.

"It's alright, I kind of deserved it, I reckon," Sirius admitted with a shrug. And it wasn't a complete lie, he had thought about whether he had deserved it or not and in the end had decided that he probably would have done the same thing had he felt the same way about someone as James did about Lily and had heard the statement. Perhaps the slap hadn't really been right, but the intentions had been somewhat honorable.

"I have a question," James said abruptly, breaking Sirius' train of thought. Sirius raised his eyebrows and indicated for James to proceed, as he was busy putting on his own tie at this point. "Do you like Lupin?"

The tie left his hands and Sirius stumbled forward, somehow losing his footing and falling towards the dresser, knocking his books off of the dresser and losing his tie to the floor. "What?" he asked, incredulously as he dropped to the floor to gather up the books. He knew his face was bright red and didn't want James to see it. "Who are you – what are you thinking?"

"Oh, stop blushing." James was at eye-level now, sitting right next to where Sirius was, on his knees. Even though he wanted to say something indignantly, there was no way to refute the fact that his face was red when James was right there smiling at him knowingly. "Really, you're going to end up being as obvious as me one day. So I'm taking that as a yes?" Sirius didn't say anything, just got his books together and stood up. James grinned up at him from the floor. "You went weird when I said his name. Before that I just kind of had an idea…but you like him, don't you, Pads?"

"You're crazy," Sirius replied stubbornly, dropping his books on his bed, finding it easier to make the blush go away when he wasn't looking at James and focusing on something that wasn't mocking his pseudo-love life, which basically meant everything else in room. It was hard to concentrate on anything _but _James, especially with the return of the use of his alias.

"Crazy in love," James cooed, grinning at his own words. "Say what you want, but you really are taking after me. It's quite adorable…my little Sirius is all grown up and still can't stop blushing for all that is Holy you're just completely hopeless aren't you?" James seemed to find it entertaining, as always, to poke fun at any fault he could find in his best mate, and right now he had more than enough material.

"Not all of us can be as charming as you, Prongs," Sirius said, solemnly.

* * *

_So I was kind of thinking about it all day…_ That was much too creepy, Sirius decided. He didn't want Remus to know he had been thinking about it all day. How weird would that be if Remus knew that he hadn't paid any attention at all in class because he was thinking of how exactly to handle all of this. _Pace yourself_, he reminded himself once more, as he nearly jumped out of his seat when the bell rang signaling that class was over.

"Mister Black, may I have a word with you?" Sirius groaned inwardly as his Chemistry teacher called him forward. Slughorn was, in the simplest of terms, salt thrown onto open wounds. If he didn't find Remus, and now, who knew when he would see the other boy? It was all a matter of chance. They seemed to be switching in-between being insanely close and then back to that awkward, just-met-you stage. Sirius was less than excited to stand in front of his teacher's desk and here even worse news. "You're failing, and if you don't pass you're going to have to retake this class at some point. And, you'll have to tell your parents."

Like he didn't have enough to deal with already? That nice little add-on about how he would have to let his parents know that he had failed was something only Slughorn would say. Because he knew all too well what was going on Sirius' mind, or at least what was going on that concerned his grades. God forbid he knew what else Sirius was thinking about…but of course he knew that as soon as Sirius heard the word failing he immediately connected it with Things I Don't Tell Mum And Dad.

"I know, sir," Sirius mumbled in response. Leaving the classroom he wasn't altogether surprised to see that the hallways were nearly all cleared out, but he was definitely let down by the fact. "Fuck!" Sirius hissed, throwing his textbook down at the floor. A group of three girls down the corridor stopped giggling at looked at him and then started again. Normally he wouldn't have cared, but he shot them a dirty look and they hurried away, talking amongst themselves about him. Sirius didn't quite care anymore.

He found himself in the library, no books around him, just laying his head down on the table and staring at the side of his Chemistry book. Maybe if he stared at it long enough and used enough of his will power he could cause the vile thing to burst into flames. It didn't seem to be working and he lost all his will power once he heard a few choice words. "What's the brightest star of Canis Major doing in the library on a dreary day like this?"

Sirius nearly jumped at the voice, but instead just sat up and leaned back in his chair. "Not feeling so bright, I'm failing."

"Chemistry?"

"What else? I don't have any with anyone, how am I supposed learn about it?" Sirius complained, pushing the book away from him. He wasn't just angry about his grades, but about everything else going on his life. Sirius was well aware that he didn't have much of a right to feel this way, but he wasn't too worried about whether or not he _should _feel that way, he was just taking out his emotions in the easiest way possible; letting them spill out of him with no filter.

"Oh, Sirius, and you think everyone else makes a big deal out of things?" Remus said softly as he sat down next to the other boy. Sirius slumped further down in his chair and let out an exasperated sigh. "Here, I'll help you study, alright? I've already taken this class at my old school. It's not all that difficult once you really get into it. Come on, you're not going to pass by falling asleep, even if my voice does make one want to go to bed."

Somehow Sirius managed to group some semblance of alertness about him, trying to listen as Remus explained covalent bonds. His mind kept drifting in and out of the conscious flow of words until he couldn't take it any longer. "Rem, I need to ask you something."

"It's not about covalent bonds, is it?" Remus said with a small smile. Sirius shook his head and Remus closed the book. "Go on, then."

"Do you want to – to, uh, go out or something this weekend?" Oh, fuck, that had come out wrong. "What I mean is, you know, they…we can go into town this weekend and I just was wondering if maybe you wanted to – erm, we could go to the movies or something? If…I mean, if you want to?" This wasn't coming out of his mouth the same way that it had sounded in his head. It was easier to ask a girl for a shag than it was to ask your mate to go to the movies with you. He convinced himself that this was all just a slip of the tongue.

To his surprise Remus was grinning, his face slightly pink. "Yeah!" he replied, rather loudly, "I mean, you know, yeah, sure. I've never really been around town before, so it would pretty exciting." Remus seemed to not have noticed the mix up of words that Sirius had – unintentionally, he told himself – uttered, much to Sirius' relief. "So, wait, did you say 'go out' or did I hear that wrong?"

"I – just teach me about these stupid bonds," Sirius muttered, blushing furiously, so focused on his embarrassed thoughts that he didn't notice the smile gracing Remus' face.

**A/N**: First off, I know this chapter may seem to have some plot holes in it, but don't worry, I always explain things. The next chapter is going to be like...super...lots of explaining and, as you may have guessed, there's a possibility of some actual real romance and not JUST angsty fluff? Be excited.

I've been so busy lately. I haven't responded to much of anything. First off, I have driver's training, which I'm deathly scared of. Honestly, what if the engine just bursts into flames? I'm so scared of fire it's not even funny. ): So with that going on I've been busy, plus I'm writing an original story. And it won't be posted anywhere because I'm going to work on it all summer and then try and get it published. I know…'yeah right' but I really think I'm going to do it. It's pretty exciting. So, of course I'll be updating all my stories, if any of you care, but it will take longer than usual. Review even if you hate it.


	7. So New

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: Chapter title derived from a song that Cillian Murphy sang in some old movie. I know what the movie is, but chances are you don't. Listen to by going to my profile, it's under Influences. On the note of Cillian, he's absolutely gorgeous and the reason why I can only write fluffy pieces. I have watched Batman Begins over and over because of him. He's actually what I also kind of imagined Remus to look like, in all honesty. And I knew Rem was gorgeous from day one. :D

**Chapter Seven**: So New

Just because it felt like a date didn't mean it _was _one. Sirius was resolute in this idea. James was smiling at him as he stated it out loud, defiantly. The early afternoon sun making Sirius feel like he was King Midas; everything he touched seemed to turn to gold. He wouldn't settle for anything less anymore. Silver was just a nice name for second rate. "Well it's not one, James, and don't call it one. I may have accidentally called it one, but that's beside the point. I'm not putting any effort into this."

"I take it that you fell into a pile of close and just _happened _to make your way out looking like that?" James had a point, so Sirius threw a pillow at him. Alright, so, he looked a great deal more polished than usual, but that didn't mean anything. Just because he had spent twenty minute trying to figure out if the midnight blue sweater brought out his grey eyes better than the black sweater he already had on didn't mean that he was trying to look nice. He just wanted to…shine, was all.

Maybe he had put a bit of effort into his outfit at least. But all that had come out of it was him being dressed in way too much black. His dark grey eyes looked positively bright compared to the pitch black sweater, dark blue jeans and black shoes. And while James pretended it was all Sirius' doing, he couldn't deny that he had taken one look at the outfit and shaken his head. "No, no, no, you need to balance, honestly, what am I, your mum?" he had asked, throwing clothing out from the drawers of dressers, searching through the closet until he had found what he deemed and undershirt.

"Customarily I find that one wears a dress shirt _over _other items of clothing," Sirius had said sarcastically as he looked at the black and white striped thing in his hands. But if there was one thing James knew about it was looking nice and presentable, so he had obliged his friend's wishes and ended looking utterly, as he dubbed it – "Gay, James. I look like I'm trying to be gay and failing so terribly at it that even my mum would laugh at my effort."

"Oh, Sirius, stop flirting with the dramatics. Your mum doesn't give you the time of day anyway." James really should watch the knife he was sticking in Sirius' ego, that white shirt had cost a bundle and there was no way blood was going to come out of it. "I happen to think that you look very handsome indeed and I bet Lupin will feel the same way." Grinning at his best mate's glowering glare.

"I'm not trying to impress him."

"I know."

"This isn't a date, James."

"Did I say it was a date? I don't recall those words leaving my mouth." He was far too cunning for his own good sometimes. James had a way of making you admit what you were thinking, what you felt, without having to insinuate anything. He knew everything and everyone knew he did. It was all a matter of whether you succumbed to this knowledge or not and without fail Sirius always did. Every, single, time.

"Are you sure I look alright?" Because he really did care how he looked. Whether it was a date or not, he did care. Standing in front of the mirror, this time he had a chance to look his appearance over. Perhaps he did look a bit…off, different than usual, but he had to admit it wasn't exactly bad, this whole Taking Care Of Your Appearance thing. Eventually he might even get used to it. Hell, maybe he'd splurge, buy a comb or something.

Handsome was what he decided on. It sounded a sight better than beautiful and altogether much manlier, which he was convinced he was. Even if he did look slightly effeminate in that stupid outfit he had picked out. But it was too late to change now, despite the fact that he wanted to as he looked in the reflective surface, sucking in his cheeks with a deep breath. "Yes, I'm quite sure," James reassured him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "So you're excited for your…date?"

Sirius growled and pushed James away, the other boy laughing at his actions. Coughing in a cloud of cologne that James sprayed on him suddenly, Sirius stumbled backwards into his desk, papers flying up into the air mixing with the expensive scent. "Oi, Prongs, I'm not trying to suffocate the kid," he cried as James extended a hand to help him up, snickering all the while. He groaned as he realized that the smell was probably emanating from his clothing.

"Well, you never know where things will lead to." James winked lavishly.

"James. Shut up."

* * *

"What _is_ that smell?"

"What? Nothing. Not cologne or anything if that's what you were thinking."

"Is it cologne? It's rather alright, a bit much, but it's alright."

"Really?" Sirius cursed himself for sounding so eager, like a child being offered a sweet. What did it matter to him if the Remus was alright with the cologne or not? He already felt idiotic for taking the time to look nice. Remus looked completely normal, like how anyone else might dress when going into town with one of your friends. This obviously meant that this wasn't anything special to Remus and Sirius had better stop thinking that it was anything besides just some time spent together between friends.

Remus just smiled lightly. "Really, Sirius." Truth be told, Sirius wasn't really sure what this was anymore. The second he had met up with the smaller boy, his mind had basically gone blank. Remus may have looked the same as ever, but he was exuding some sort of energy that Sirius had never seen from him before. "D'you…d'you reckon we should go now?" Sirius had gotten lost in thought and Remus was tugging on his sleeve now, looking up at him with that gracious smile that left the raven-haired teen at a loss for words.

Weekend afternoons into town were supposed to be planned. They never went as the teachers wanted them to, mostly for the fact that the students knew the entire county of Worcestershire like the back of their hands. The town of Bromsgrove was a piece of cake by this age for people who had lived there their entire lives. Today they were actually supposed to be going to the museum. Instead everyone mutually drifted off into town and the teachers who were, in theory, watching over them, went, ironically, to the only places the students weren't allowed to go – the bars and pubs of the town.

Meanwhile, around town, there were the people everyone at Bromsgrove School envied. The normal kids, from the South and North High Schools, who didn't have planned weekends and slept in their own homes at night. The kind of people who may have had it hard financially but actually saw their parents, Sirius had always thought. He had to wonder what that was like. The fact that people could be happy with that level of economic status was bewildering to him. It was like they survived on something other than material things.

"What do you want to do?" Remus seemed blissfully unaware to much around them. The crowded town wasn't a place for someone so daydream-prone as he was and Sirius found himself pulling the other boy out of several peoples' ways. It was almost as if Remus had wanted Sirius to grab his arm and pull him closer as they wove through the crowds of people.

The question presented was an interesting one. It was one of the moments where you knew what you wanted to say, but didn't want to say it for fear of the idea being rejected. But, Sirius figured, he was _not _going to be all shy and unsure of himself, because that was what the girls always did when he took them out to town on dates, and this was not a date. "A film," he said, brashly. Remus nodded, no opposition to the idea whatsoever.

"I take it you like them – films, that is," he offered as conversation as they walked through the streets towards the only theater in town.

"_Like _them? That is the understatement of the century, Moony." Once again there was that quick, unyielding blush, so simple and yet so there. "I'll watch anything twice as long as it's not about real life. Films are an escape from all this shit." He waved his free hand around at the bustling crows of people, all so simply ordinary and boring. No one leading a life that would change anything, just going through the motions of life, day by day. It was necessary for him to escape it at times, because the mediocrity of it all was overwhelming.

"Ah, that's rather beautiful isn't it?" Remus said thoughtfully. Sirius looked at him in surprise and then blushed at the serene look on his face, realizing that this was the first time he had told anyone how he felt about trips to the theater, not even James knew about his strange passion. "I don't hold films in such high regard, but I can certainly see how someone would. For me it's more like books for that sort of thing, you know? An escape in the form of literature, in case you hadn't noticed." Sirius had definitely noticed; after all, it was hard to find Remus _without _a book these days.

The theater wasn't very crowded. It never was, only bringing in scores of old women and small groups of students to see the latest in horror-fare. This week everyone seemed to want to see some piece called _Demon Seed_, but Sirius didn't really see the excitement in it all. He didn't see what the film world's obsession with the devil was recently. After a few moments of glaring good naturedly at the clamoring crowd Sirius found Remus looking at a poster for _The Car_, just another example of terrible filmmaking.

"John Marley is rather dreamy, isn't he?" he said forlornly.

"Oh, well, he seems quite alright, I suppose," Sirius said awkwardly.

"That was rhetorical, but thanks for the answer," Remus looked up at him with a grin and Sirius flushed furiously.

"He's not all that attractive," he said finally, turning away from the poster. "I don't get what it is with everyone and stars in the films. They're just as normal as everyone else, what makes them so much better looking? Just because you only ever see them from their good side…"

"Sirius, Sirius," Remus chided, "I never said that they were better than everyone else. There's just a certain something about someone in a film, no one can really compare to it." His eyes were once again fixed on the poster and, for whatever reason, it made Sirius angry to hear him say these things. Later on he would know how he actually felt and why, but for now he wasn't privy to that information.

Sirius just snorted at the words and got an amused look in response. "Seems I'll just have to be in a film or two then, huh?" he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

To his surprise Remus simply laughed and grabbed his arm. "Funny thing about that, you know, I like you the way you are. I doubt I'd be with you right now if you were as glamorous as the people on the big screen, so let's just keep you, well, you, alright?" There was an exchange of smiles and Sirius was once more on top of the world; even more so now that Remus kept the hold on his arm and slipped his hand down so he was holding Sirius' own. "Can we see that one, then?"

"You…want to?" Sirius was not planning on seeing the movie Remus wanted to see and he hardly wanted to have to compete for Remus' attention when his contender was someone that Remus had called 'dreamy' but he couldn't say no when Remus looked at him like that, an undeniable face. "Alright, I'll pay for it then." And for a second Remus was ready to refuse, but Sirius shook his head and went to buy the tickets.

The weird part was that, even as he turned around and saw them, he didn't think anything of it. The three boys looked completely normal, but also devious and they were looking right past him, towards Remus and he was almost sure he felt a hand reach out to grab his arm, but he was gone towards the back of the theater before he could think anything of it. Why had he left Remus alone? Possibly so he could revel in the moment without looking completely insane, but whatever the case, he was quickly alerted of the problem.

"If it isn't little, sickly Lupin." Sirius' heart froze at the words and malice they were laced with, somehow hearing them above the people closest to him, the most concentrated group of people, all of them talking as they waited to buy their tickets. Somehow hearing the words all the way across the front room, and then spotting their source, the mouth of a rather sinister looking young man.

With no idea what he was really going to do Sirius pushed through several groups of people back towards Remus, but it took him long enough to get there. Whoever this guy was, he had already assaulted Remus enough, but even worse, he had a grip on Remus' jaw and was pulling him close to his face, their lips near to touching and _that _was what really set Sirius off for some reason. He barely even heard Remus' words, "Would you stop, please?" As his fist collided with the side of the boy's face all that was in his mind was that Remus was his and no one had the right to touch him that way.

Before long Sirius had him pinned down on the floor and was punching the kid's face, blood staining the floor of the theater. He was in such a rage that he could barely prevent the two people pulling him back and away to stop his attack. "What in the bloody hell, mate!" one of the young man's friends was helping him to his feet, his nose looking almost broken and words slurred from his injury. "Are you fucking mental or something?"

Sirius didn't even register his remarks, but kicked out at him. "Let go of me!" he snarled up at the two workers who he was struggling against. They were putting up a good fight, but so was Sirius, but then he felt the tugging on his sleeve and there was Remus, looking up at him pleadingly. Then, and only then, did he stop fighting and did the two men let go of him. "Remus…," he said softly, reaching out to the smaller boy, already starting to regret his actions.

But Remus didn't look at him, just looked at the young men who Sirius assumed he knew from somewhere. "I'd very much appreciate it if you didn't bother me anymore, Jordan, unless of course you feel it prudent to do so," he said, very carefully and calmly. Sirius had the utmost respect for his friend at that point, because he knew that he would never be able to keep his temper in check as Remus was doing at the moment. Jordan was a tall and lanky boy, dark red hair and black, coal-like eyes, looking perpetually on fire. He glared at both of them for a moment and Sirius wanted to say something as well, but Remus grabbed his hand and pulled him away from the situation.

Neither one of them said a word as Remus led them out of the theater and back onto the streets. A film was out of the question now, Sirius was sure, but he didn't ask because Remus' grip on his hand was so tight, he almost seemed uncharacteristically angry at him. Silence got unbearable as they left the crowded part of time, coming closer in proximity to the museum and other sorts of places. "Remus," he whined quietly.

His hand was let go of, but it wasn't gentle, almost as if Remus was throwing him to the side. "You're no better than him you know," he said, softly. "I've known Jordan since I was a kid, and he's hated me since – I got sick." Sirius remembered the words. _If it isn't little, sickly Lupin. _He hadn't been paying attention to the words much, more so the actions of the vile person, but now he was wondering what Jordan had meant by the words. "I had surgery a few years back and everyone started giving me attention." His hand over his heart and Sirius remembered then.

The scars.

"I don't know why," Remus continued, looking down, "but all of a sudden everyone seemed to think I was something special and I kind of liked it. I'll admit to basking in the glory of the attention far longer than I should have, but I'd never felt that sort of thing before, you know?" He looked up and met Sirius' eyes. "No, you wouldn't know, would you?" And suddenly Sirius was ashamed by his popularity and how easily it came to him. "God knows why, but Jordan got jealous of me. We were…friends. I thought we were, until he told everyone."

"You told him you were gay," Sirius said with sudden revelation. Remus nodded and looked away. "That's why you think I'm going to tell everyone." Another nod. "I'm not like him, Moony, I'm really not."

"He was – he would do that too. Get angry and just jump people like that. You reminded me so much of him when that happened. I'd always seem the similarities and I tried to convince myself you weren't like him, but you really are." Remus' voice was barely audible and Sirius could have sworn he was almost near crying. "It's almost frightening."

Cold swept over Sirius and he had the urge to pull Remus towards him and tell him everything was going to be alright, but he didn't. "You're wrong," he responded, "about me. I'm a bit rash, that's true and sometimes I don't have control over my emotions, but I would never do what he did to you. I don't think I could do that if I wanted to…I care for you far too much by this point." And then he did it, grabbed Remus into his arms because he didn't know what else to do at this point.

Yet Remus pushed him away, no longer upset or angry, just looking as if he didn't believe the circumstances. "I told you not to do this just because you can."

"That's not why I'm doing it!" Sirius cried out, exasperated. The area around them was had been steadily emptying out since hours before they had arrived and was almost quiet now in the late afternoon as people moved towards the center of the city to see the attractions and meet up with others. Still, they weren't completely alone, and Sirius didn't want to do this in front of everyone, it only solidified the idea that he liked to make a show for everyone.

There was a small alleyway between a restaurant and the museum, encased in enough shadows that it made Sirius feel secure as he pulled Remus into them. "What are you doing?" Remus asked, though he followed with no real complaints. Sirius didn't reply, simply grabbed the smaller boy's hand and pushing him against the stone wall of the restaurant, leaning in close to Remus' ear and whispering.

"I'm doing what I want to do."

It felt good, better than anything he had ever done. Kissing Remus' neck lightly and hearing the light whimper that escaped the other young man's lips. Caressing the side of Remus' jaw line and then leaning in for the real show; the one that needed no audience. When their lips met, he knew he had been wrong. _This _was the best thing he had ever done. Soft and tentative, both of them so uncertain of what they were doing, but it felt so right. Remus squirming underneath him, one of his hands moving underneath the black sweater. A light moan from one of them; both of them, Sirius wasn't sure which one was more accurate, but Remus' mouth opened and Sirius' tongue entered.

Exchanging saliva with Remus was so different than with any of the girls he had ever kissed. They were always so scared to start anything, but Remus attacked his mouth with the same ferocity as Sirius attacked his. The smaller boy's hand running over his rib cage and feeling simply delightful. And, oh God, whether it was on purpose or on accident, his knee between Sirius' legs, contacting sensitive skin. It was Sirius' turn to whisper.

Remus cleared his throat and for a horrible moment Sirius thought he had done something wrong, but Remus was smiling at him, amused. "Breathing is still essential to life, you know, Sirius," he said, his voice somewhat hoarse. Sirius grinned back at him, feeling incredibly stupid for not taking such a simple thing as oxygen into account. Kissing Remus was better than oxygen, though, and much more essential to life, he decided, after doing it several more times in the safety of the dark alleyway.

All good things come to an end, though. It was nearly time to get back to school and, as much as Sirius would have liked to, they couldn't stay in town forever. Remus pulled him out of the shadows and back into the light, both of them squinting into the sunlight. Remus let go of Sirius' hand for a few seconds, but Sirius fixed that quickly. The look he gave Remus said it all. At least until they got back to school.

And maybe a bit longer. Because holding hands with Remus, among other things, just felt right.

**A/N**: How Sirius feels about movies and how Remus feels about books, well, right, that's how I feel about them. I wrote the first chapter of my novel (sans editing and revising, but whatever) and decided to reward myself with writing this. Because, honestly, I was dying to write this chapter. A few people said something about my novel and so I figured I'd let you guys know what it's about, ever so slightly. Well, there's some twins, an Asian, a necklace and a teddy bear. Fun, isn't it? I would tell more, but who knows what creepers would steal the idea. ;D I totally based how they visit the town on how they visit Hogsmeade. All the movies I used came out in 1977, but it's not quite timeline accurate, just for fun. Review even if you hate it.


	8. Scales and Arpeggios

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: Title of this chapter. Anyone remember this song from the _Aristocats_? In my opinion, one of the best and most underappreciated Disney movies ever. Basically, scales and arpeggios are the sorts of things you would play when you're just starting to learn how to play an instrument and possibly sing? I'm not a singer, but I would assume so. Thus, it's like practice, you figure out what you can do and what you need to work on. I updated my entire Influences section to include a lot of songs I listen to that help me write. I have really wide musical tastes, so you might see something you like. :D Anywho...  
**Disclaimer**: Just to reiterate, I don't own any of the characters, except Michael Carlisle, who pops up in all my stories from time to time, just for a bit of fun.

**Chapter Eight**: Scales and Arpeggios

"Sirius! I'm in love, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!"

"For the love of God, James, it's much too early to be up," Sirius muttered into his pillow. He turned over in bed and yelped when he found James lying next to him, contentedly staring at the ceiling. "How long have you been there?" he asked, sleepily, burrowing back underneath his blankets so as not to let any of the early morning rays of light anywhere near his tired eyes.

Though he couldn't see James he heard the creak of the bedsprings and then a snicker. "Lupin sure tired you out, didn't he?" but he didn't wait for an answer. "I've been here for five whole minutes and you will _never_ believe where I was just ten minutes ago." His voice sounded dreamy and, dare he make the comparison, almost like someone who was, indeed, in love. It was enough of a shock for Sirius to throw the comforter aside and face his best friend.

"No you weren't," he said to the triumphant look on James' face. "No you definitely were not. It took me a month, there's no way – you're lying." Sirius hated the look James was giving him right now, not saying a thing but insinuating so much. Perhaps it wasn't fair that he didn't even plan on telling James about the kiss; yet. Either way, he had the right to know if James and Evans had done, well, a lot more than snogging, because Sirius sure as hell would be telling James if he had done the deed in town yesterday.

"It took you a month to ask her out?" James asked, his eyes widening in mock surprise. "Why, Sirius, I had no idea you were such a shy boy. You come off as so confident, but I suppose that's just your wide-eyed innocence, isn't it?" Sirius rolled over and pushed him off of the bed, James laughed even as he hit the hard floor. "Don't be so aggressive, Pads, it's not as attractive as you think it is."

"When did you do it?" Sirius asked, leaning over the edge of the bed, his mind still reeling from the news. _How did you do it? Because I just kind of starting snogging with Remus and I'm really not sure what's going on now. As far as I know you have to exchange words to be going out, but if you're otherwise incapacitated, can the exchange of body fluids work the same way? _"I mean, really, was it before or after the sex? In my experience it's always before. How trashy would it be to wait until after, you know? Simply disgusting."

James grabbed his arm and pulled him off the bed. Sirius, laughing, fell down to the floor and then rolled over so that he was sitting right next to his best mate. "Truthfully, I don't know really," James explained slowly. "It was like, I always kind of knew that we would be together, but now it's really happening and we both know." He looked at his hands, as if expecting them to disappear, followed by the entire world, maybe he thought this was all a dream. Sirius had been having similar feelings all day. "Now that it's really happening Sirius…I think I've loved her all along, you know? Even when you and her…well, we don't need to get into that."

"We certainly do not," Sirius said, shuddering at the thought of the fiery redhead.

"I just have one question, though." The look on James' face made Sirius uncertain as to whether he wanted to hear said question. "How's it? Snogging a bloke, I mean."

"How in the bloody hell do you know about that?" Sirius cried incredulously, not sure how to take the remark, especially with the added effect of James raising his eyebrows incessantly.

"I don't, I just wanted to see if you did and by God, you did, didn't you? Details, details, all the dirty little details!" James called out, excitedly.

"You and Lily first," Sirius refused, sinking down as far as he could, trying to find his way into the woodwork so that James couldn't see the blush that was growing rapidly on his face. It was one thing to tell James about all the girls he had his way with, but Remus was a completely different story. Remus wasn't something he would be done with in two weeks and he didn't need James knowing every 'dirty little detail' about the two of them.

James sneezed, out of the blue. "I think she gave me a cold," he said with a frown. Then, he grinned. "All I can say is she isn't like other girls. I think we talked more than we had our lips together, which is a first." All his words were thoughtful now; he actually seemed to be considering every single one of them, weighing their importance. "As lame as it sounds, she's perfect to me even though I know she's not and that makes her even better."

_That's not lame._

"Now, on to you and your little plaything."

"Do I have to?" James' look told him that, yes, he had to. "Fine. I guess, with Remus, he's actually the first that isn't a…plaything, you could say. Every girl I've gone out with meant nothing to me, but now, even though I barely know what's going on between us I'm so sure that its way more than anything I've ever had before." Just as James had before him, Sirius meant every word he said, more than any other word he had ever spoken.

"And the snogging?"

"Is amazing."

* * *

"Why do you insist on doing that? It's bad for you, you know," Remus said softly, watching as Sirius nervously played with the lit cigarette in his hand, a week later, on a cold Sunday, during the time of day that never got a name, the milky mixture of afternoon and evening.

"Hmm," he replied, watching as a few stray ashes fell down to the ground from the bench where they sat. A couple holding hands strolled by oblivious to everything else in the world but the hold they had on their lover's hand. "Why aren't we like them? It's bad for me, as well," Sirius asked, his voice barely a whisper as he reached out his free hand to lightly touch the side of Remus' face. But Remus grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand down, away from his cheek.

"Tell you what, you stop smoking and I'll let you do what you want in front of who you want," Remus said good-naturedly. Sirius dropped the cigarette on the ground and then crushed it into the pavement and grinned. "Right, because that was the last cigarette in the entire world, and it obviously means that you'll never touch one again." Remus looked slightly irritated and his face as flushed as he spoke, Sirius found himself a bit embarrassed. He had never considered his smoking a nasty habit before, but now he shamefully felt that way.

"They haven't really proven it's bad for you," he mumbled in some form of pathetic defense for the pack of cigarettes that were in his coat pocket. "Everyone keeps saying it's terrible, but I've been smoking for two years now and I'm perfectly fine." Actually, only three people had ever bothered to complain about his smoking before Remus. His parents and they believed that he had quit soon after he had started when in reality that had just been the beginning of his addiction, and Lily Evans and look how they had turned out. If he could help it Sirius wouldn't do it around Remus, but he wasn't going to quit.

However, Remus wasn't like his parents or Lily in that he didn't seem to press the matter, though his eyes continuously strayed from Sirius' face to where the destroyed cigarette lay on the ground as he spoke. "Is it fair to ask you why you're so eager to let everyone know about _us_?" His fingers were tapping absently against the worn wood of the bench, hollow vibrations that almost matched the low volume of his voice. "I actually quite hate anyone who broadcasts their relationship, gallivanting about, like them." The couple they had seen previously was now only a few hundred feet away, sitting with each other on a bench, much as Remus and Sirius were.

Yet Remus and Sirius weren't nearly as close as that couple was. "Well maybe them, specifically," he said, his eyes narrowing at the redhead and his best mate. "But why would that bother you?" In all reality it wasn't the fact that James and Lily were together that bothered him it was the thoughts returning that the two of them were so perfect for one another, and even beyond that it was that they could flaunt how perfect they were, while Sirius was stuck worrying about whether it looked like he was sitting a bit too close to someone who was just supposed to be a friend.

"I don't know," Remus said, his amber eyes looking distant, as if he was thinking about something worlds away, a place clouded with emotion. "Maybe it's just the fact that it makes it fake, you know? People who have diamonds only save them for special occasions. People who show off their relationships – they seem fake to me, like they're only waiting for the next best thing and the person they have right now is just an easy imitation. Some gaudy piece of cubic zirconia."

"I like gaudy," Sirius said, shortly.

"No, you like fake things," Remus replied, his voice equally as curt. They had a quick staring contest which Sirius had no chance of winning. He finally squinted his eyes and sighed, looking towards the darkening horizon if only because he wanted to avoid those inquisitive eyes. "Look, Sirius, I'm not saying we need to continue this hiding thing we've been doing, but you have admit, as fun as it was for a few days it's started to get a bit old." So Remus had a point there, Sirius knew.

Over the past week any empty classroom was game. Sneaking in during breaks, risking getting caught and snogging against posters about morality and the English government or other such paradoxical things. Leaving the room and emerging with tussled hair and messy clothes along with accelerated heartbeats; everyone noticed it, but the popular consensus seemed to be that Remus was the new James and Lily was the new Sirius. That couldn't be farther from the truth, but no one was arguing these points, just laughing at their nonexistent validity. "I mean, I like a snog in my History classroom as much as the next bloke and, yes, it is a bit fun to have a think about it when Binns is droning on in the same class later that day, but it really isn't as exciting anymore."

Sirius still thought it was and he mumbled as much under his breath, before voicing a few words. "You're sure it's not just that you don't like me?"

"Goodness, yes, I hate you Sirius, thanks for making me realize it," Remus said, rolling his eyes. He stood up and grabbed the other boy by his hand. "C'mon, if lover boy's out here that means your dorm room is empty…" Well, a boy could hope, couldn't he? Sirius found himself easily following Remus down the walk, the cold weather not bothering his in the least. Normally he wasn't one to be led anywhere by anyone, but the tone of Remus' voice was more than inviting.

Only five minutes later found Sirius standing in the doorway to his own dorm room, unsure of what to do. "I, um, you – should I close the door or something?" Remus just shrugged from where he sat on the edge of Sirius' bed, staring at the floor. Regardless of the scarcely readable reaction he was given Sirius went ahead and shut the door, then took a seat next to Remus on the bed. It was completely silent in the room and Sirius found that he had to lightly tap the edge of the bed so there was some sort of noise.

"Sometimes it kind of feels like I don't have a heartbeat." Remus spoke in such a quiet voice that Sirius wasn't sure if he had heard the words right, and he turned his head to look at the other boy in slight awe. "You know, it skips and stuff, I don't really understand it, my heart problems and all. That's why I had to have surgery. I thought it was sort of…cool at the time, like it made me more interesting because I had something wrong with me. But it's really not. Sometimes I get scared that it's just going to stop and give up, because there's no point anymore."

Although it was the weekend Remus was in his uniform. Sirius had never thought about it before, but when he considered the fact that Remus was a scholarship student he probably didn't have a lot of extra clothes. Once more Sirius felt ashamed of the wealth bestowed upon him from birth. But this wasn't a time to think about such things. Remus' hair fell in front of his eyes as he leaned forward, his right hand reaching up to touch the white fabric that covered his chest, that covered the scars.

"I don't know what to say to that," Sirius admitted finally, after a few moments of silence. Remus looked up at him abruptly and Sirius felt terrible, because he knew that Remus had been waiting for him to know exactly what to say. But that wasn't what this was. It wasn't a perfect relationship where everything was going to work easily and they were always going to know what to say. "All I can figure is that if you're going to give up, so is your heart."

Once more there was silence and Remus looked back at the floor. He had wanted a nicer answer, Sirius was sure, but it wasn't a situation where he was able to deal out such kind words. They were talking about something that could – he shuddered to think about it – _kill _a person. Fatalities were never to be taken lightheartedly in Sirius' mind at least. "You sound like my mum," Remus muttered, with a slight smile on his face. Sirius couldn't help but to snort at this. He had been compared to a lot of people, but never once to someone's mum.

There had to be a first time for everything, though.

"Is this weird?" Remus was unbuttoning his shirt.

"Not at all," Sirius replied with a grin, moving to help with the process.

"You wish." Remus pushed his hands away. "Honestly, I'm not going to risk James and Lily showing up out of nowhere, and you know they would, too." Sirius groaned overdramatically and fell back on the bed for a few short seconds, but it wasn't long before Remus was grabbing his arm, pulling him back up. "I wanted to know if it was weird if I asked you to…feel my heartbeat." Remus looked so excruciatingly nervous, his hand holding onto Sirius' arm just a bit too hard.

"You want me to…"

"It's too weird, isn't it?" Remus said with a halting laugh. "I figured as much. Not that you have to, it's just, well, I've always wanted to ask someone if they feel what I do or at least can begin to understand that it's like. Because it really is weird. I've been like this since I was born. For you it's easy, you don't know anything but a normal heartbeat, you've never felt anything else. I just thought maybe you wouldn't mind it, but I guess I was wrong."

"Stop thinking so much," was all Sirius had to say in response, his voice somewhat stern. Remus' smile told him that he knew as much and that all of his previous words had been nothing but a calculated guilt trip. Sirius cursed his luck, the first guy he fell for just had to be a smart one, didn't he? What were they, the personification of opposites attracting? Whatever their relationship was didn't matter at this point though, as Remus let his shirt slip lightly past his shoulder to show his bare chest.

The scars weren't angry or haphazard. They were precise and symmetrical, almost flawless in a scary sort of way. He couldn't take his hand off of the lines, as terribly ugly as they were, just a reminder of the pain that Remus probably felt daily, and he hesitantly reached out and, after a light nod from the smaller boy, touched the one closest the center of his chest. It was odd, but nearly beautiful at the same time, tracing along the line that had once been an incision to fix a problem. Sirius had never been comfortable with the inner workings of the human body; biology made him cringe. To him, if you were sick, you were sick, the reasons were just an afterthought.

For Remus, though, the reasons were his existence. Without knowing them who knew if the two would have ever met. "Open heart surgery," Remus said, "three times. It's still beating, but it's really…I'm going to need a transplant eventually." Sirius didn't say anything, but Remus took his hand and placed it so that the palm was flat on his chest, right above his heart and then Sirius felt it. The light beating of the heart underneath the skin and tissue of Remus' body, for a second so simply in balance that nothing seemed wrong.

Until he felt it. A beat. A beat. A beat. Normalcy until there was nothing and Remus shivered ever so slightly against his hand, because his heart had given up for a fraction of a second. Once more. A beat. A beat. A beat. And then the startling seconds of nothingness, the cold feeling in Sirius' stomach and the tears in his eyes. He tried to remember how often your heart was supposed to be and then compare it to the beats he was feeling. He couldn't remember and just began to count.

One. Two. Three.

Over and over he lost count and began again, not even noticing that he was leaning forward until Remus' arms were around him and he couldn't speak. It hit him harder than ever now. He knew what this meant, but he didn't want to face it. That short skip in beats would soon extend to become an end, and there really wasn't much hope, especially when he recalled Remus' words.

_Sometimes I get scared that it's just going to stop and give up, because there's no point anymore._

Sirius almost felt like this could be true. That fragile, momentary collapse in the set-up of life (How often was it supposed to beat? he kept thinking in the back of his mind) was so slight, but so detrimental. And Remus, though he was the one holding Sirius now, was the weaker of the two. Perhaps it was because of his heart problems or maybe it had nothing to do with them. Even so, it just felt like any second that heart could stop, and Sirius didn't want it to. More than anything he did not want Remus' heart to stop.

"Sorry, was that – did it bother you?"

"Not at all."

"Are you sure about that?" Remus was smirking at him as he pushed away, tears still in his eyes due to the thoughts in his mind. Eyes always gave away so much more emotions than words could. Remus was usually good at hiding his real feelings, even when it came to those amber spheres, but now they betrayed the half-smile on his face, and matched the melancholy of Sirius' grey eyes, so constantly overcast and now threatening to finally rain down on the bed sheets between them.

"Quite," Sirius lied, brusquely. Lying wasn't such a bad thing at times. Especially when one could look into your eyes, as Remus was doing, and see the truth. Then it really wasn't a lie, it was just letting someone know that this was an issue that you couldn't handle at the moment, and Sirius certainly couldn't handle this right now. Suddenly he longed for the moments when Remus was a passing acquaintance in the library and everything had been so new.

When he didn't even know how he felt about the strange new boy, who wasn't so new, but possibly even stranger, now.

"This is probably a bad time to ask," Remus began, as he fretfully played with a few pieces of his messy hair, twisting them between his fingers as he spoke, something else to think about. Sirius briefly wondered if the small faltering that happened every few seconds in his hand motions was a result of a skipped heartbeat. "Christmas vacation – can I possibly spend it with you? Go to your house or – "

"God no!" Sirius said, surprised at how fast he spoke. But there was no way that he could spend Christmas vacation with Remus, because that would mean that Remus would meet his family. And the ghost of a bruise underneath Remus' eye was a reminder of the fact that things probably would not go over very well if they met again. "I didn't mean to – with my family, they'd hate you the moment they saw you. They would judge you the second you walked in the door. My mother would want to know your pedigree, how influential your family is, and – and, well, they barely approve of James."

"So they'll never approve of me," Remus said, hoarsely.

"Not that I care," Sirius said. A bit too loud, a bit too brash. Grabbing Remus' hand in his own and holding it tight. "I don't give a fuck what they think, I just have to follow their rules or I won't have anywhere to live." He could imagine them throwing him out of the house the second he entered it with Remus. Unlikely, but not a risk he wanted to take. After all, when his cousin Andromeda, had married a man with no real wealth, his family had practically obliterated her off of the family tree.

"What's going on _here_?" They both turned to see James standing in the doorway. Somehow neither one of them had heard the door being opened and were both caught off guard by the sight. Remus withdrew his hand and nearly catapulted himself off the bed. Sirius could hear James' silent laughter; being as close as they were it sometimes allowed them to read each other's minds.

"Right, well, I'll see you tomorrow," Remus said, practically running out of the dorm room.

Sirius almost felt like punching James. "I was trying to explain why he can't come over to my house, you stupid fuck!" His voice was exasperated, as if James was supposed to know what was going on behind closed doors.

"What, because your mum is a crazy bitch and Regulus will call you queer and you'll get all embarrassed?" James asked, his devilish smile showing as he spoke. "Or is it because you're actually embarrassed of him? More than likely, you're embarrassed of _them _and what he'll think of you once he sees who raised you. Is that it, Sirius?" But Sirius didn't answer, because they both knew James was right on every count. "If that's that case, I say, who cares, and you should just throw caution to the wind."

James always was right. Throwing caution to the wind was an expression that made no sense to Sirius. The wind was so often changing direction and speed that whatever you threw at it was bound to come back to you by some point, but they had been having a lot of wind blowing away from the school recently, so thrown to the wind was the current state of his caution, as he ran down the hallway and found his way to Remus' dorm room, not even bothering to knock, he threw the door open.

"Spend Christmas vacation with me, now, Moony."

That smile was one to die for. "I thought you would never ask."

"I'm not asking, I'm telling you," Sirius replied defiantly. But not too defiantly, because that smile did a lot more than just kill him with its sweetness. Caution had been thrown to the wind and the wind was blowing towards Number 12, Grimmauld Place, where everything was silent.

**A/N**: Wednesday was my last day of school so I wrote this in celebration. With school finally done I can now update everything and actually have time to work on my novel. Thanks for all the good luck wishes by the way! Random _Elf _reference, for the win? I don't want to get too into James and Lily's relationship, by the way. They have their own story, it's not this one. I do happen to think they're adorable though. Also, I have heart problems, not as bad as Rem, but that's how I know a bit about what he's going through, it really is scary. / Review even if you hate it.


	9. Dynamics

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: I am so sorry it took me this long to update. I've been working so much on my novel; it's like a full-fledged project now. I'm so excited about it, but I can't leave you guys hanging. How lame would that be? So here it is! Chapter nine. I hope you guys like it, because I put a lot of work (and love) into it. God, Sirius has a dynamic family, doesn't he? As for you people who mentioned Peter not showing up and all. I have plans for him, and our darling Snape. Can't leave them out now, can I?  
**Disclaimer**: If I owned Harry Potter, well, the movies definitely would not be rated PG.

**Chapter Nine**: Dynamics

"I must be missing something here."

"Not really," Sirius replied, as he draped the maroon scarf over his shoulders.

"Tell me your secret," James said angrily. "How is it that your parents agreed to having him over for the _entire _two weeks of Christmas vacation? Did money exchange hands? No, no, you people have enough of that." He was sitting on his bed, looking to be in serious thought, even though his voice was coated in sarcasm. Suddenly he looked up and snapped his fingers. "You didn't tell them he's your very own little queer, did you?"

Sirius snorted. "He's not a collectible figurine or something of the like, so, no, I did not tell them that." He grabbed the handle of his trunk and began to pull it towards the door. James sprung from the bed and followed him into the hallway. "In fact, if you must know, they aren't even aware we're having a guest over for vacation. I thought it might go over well if I put him in some sort of damsel in distress position."

"Oh, I bet you're thinking about positions."

"I would really consider keeping your mouth shut when you think it's alright to say things like that."

James shrugged as they made their way outside. "Oi, it's cold," he muttered, wrapping his arms around himself. For whatever reason he wasn't wearing a coat even though it was mid-December. "Anyway, what do you mean by damsel in distress? Your parents are going to lock him up in their tower or something? I can just see him sitting there, waiting for the dashing knight, you of course, to save him from his wretched fate."

"God, no," Sirius said, disgusted at the thought of Remus waiting for him a tower. As far as he was concerned the tawny-haired boy was smart enough to figure his way out of that sort of situation on his own. He didn't need knight Sirius or anybody. "What I mean is I'll play it off as a last minute thing, like Remus had nowhere else to go and he would freeze to death if it wasn't for, like, his billion dollar mansion burning to the ground."

"Doesn't he live in a flat with his mum or something like that?" James asked, wrinkling his nose at the idea of such living standards. Sometimes James could be quite the snob. Although, Sirius reasoned, it really wasn't something he could avoid. Even Sirius was criminal to acting that way at times. They had been brought up to look down on those below them in society. It was second nature and their first was luxury.

"I don't really know where he lives," Sirius admitted. "It doesn't matter though because, now that I think about it, Regulus knows he's a scholarship student anyway." He stopped for a moment in the middle of the sidewalk. "God," he said, looking up to the sky, "why must you curse me with such a fucking close-minded family?" A group of girls, clad in the best winter-wear the designers could offer, gave him odd looks as they passed him.

"You know, I may not know much, but I do know that swearing is, like, bad or something," James offered, motioning that they move on. Sirius sighed and grabbed his trunk, following his best mate as they walked down the sidewalk. "They've been noticing, or at least Lily says they have." Sirius gave him a questioning look. "That you're really doing it, not shagging any of them. But, believe me, they're also noticing how you look at him, Sirius, and the consensus is something like: what in the bloody hell is going on?" The last few words were said in a girly high-pitched voice.

Groaning, Sirius put a hand to his face. He could handle people knowing about him and Remus, but he could not handle gossip. Girls sitting around talking about him and his love life was altogether the creepiest thing he could ever imagine. "Whatever, I hope they come to terms with it soon and stop lusting after me. It's getting rather annoying, this whole thing of me being with Remus alone and then being bombarded by talking cleavage."

James sputtered out laughter at Sirius' last statement. "Let me get this straight, you want them to know that you're…not?"

"You know I don't like hiding things, James."

"Well, hell, why didn't you just snog him in the halls or something then?" James raised his eyebrows and grinned.

"He…doesn't want to," Sirius mumbled, for some reason embarrassed by the fact that Remus controlled this aspect of the relationship.

To his surprised James gaped at him and then reached out for his shoulder, stopping him mid-stride. "He doesn't? Oh, goodness, Pads, that's rich, that's really, really rich."

"So are you," Sirius growled in response. James opened his mouth as if to retort, but then just shrugged, resignedly. "Look, it's just something he has an opinion on and I don't see much harm in letting him have his way. Although, I do expect that two weeks should be enough time to change his mind, don't you?" As far as he figured the two weeks weren't just to introduce Remus to his family, but also to introduce Remus to the idea of public displays of affection. And lots of them.

They were almost to the large pavilion at the front of the grounds, around which wound a driveway. At the beginning and end of vacations the drive was packed with cars, almost none of them driven by the actual parents of the students. Sirius spotted Remus looking rather out of place amongst the other students. "Well, good luck with that, Padfoot. I expect a letter or ten," James said, with a wink.

"Good luck with what?" Remus asked, curiously, as they watched James saunter back towards the dorms.

"Oh, I really have no idea," Sirius said, ever so nonchalant. "You know James; I doubt he even knows what he's talking about half of the time." He scowled after his best mate.

"Well neither do you," a familiar voice said. Sirius turned to see his brother standing next to him, grimacing. Sirius grimaced right back. "Why are you standing over here anyway? Our car is here. It's not like there's anyone important around anyway." He said this pointedly, looking past Sirius to glare at Remus, who looked taken aback by the statement. Sirius just closed his eyes for a moment.

All signs pointed to a terrible vacation.

* * *

Now they sat in the back of the car. All three of them weren't talking, it was completely silent in the car. Sirius sat in the middle of his brother and Remus, feeling insurmountably awkward. He had no idea what to do with his hands and just ended up fiddling with his scarf, trying to come up with things to say that would break the obvious tension between the trio.

"So…the weather," he offered.

"It's quite nice, isn't it?" Remus smiled fondly out the window.

"It's cold," Regulus said, his voice matching the temperature outside.

"Well, the snow is nice," Remus mumbled, sinking down into the seat.

"It is, isn't it?" Sirius agreed, keeping his voice falsely happy.

"Not really, it's just cold." Regulus was glaring at Remus. "Why is he coming over anyway? I thought you gave up bringing people over after the whole…well, they don't exactly like James, do they?" He grinned as Sirius glared at him. "Haven't you even thought this out, Sirius? Honestly, mum is not going to be happy when she sees that you invited someone over without her knowing, especially when it's someone who can't even pay to attend the school."

It was taking everything that Sirius had to keep himself from attacking Regulus right there. Instead he just narrowed his eyes at his brother. "Shut up, Regulus, no one wants to hear what you have to say. Of course I've thought things through, I'm not an idiot." Even though this was a complete and total lie, he gave Remus a reassuring smile. In his mind he was freaking out. He really hadn't thought any of this through. Any lies he told would be revealed to be such by Regulus. The only option was to tell the truth.

Maybe.

* * *

"I always sort of imagined you would live in a mansion," Remus admitted as they stood on the street in front of the Black family home. It wasn't a mansion, even by the farthest stretch of one's imagination. Regulus barely contained his laughter at the suggestion. Rather, Number 12, Grimmauld Place was a terraced house, and Numbers 11 and 13 were right next door.

"He sure acts like we live in the lap of luxury, doesn't he," Regulus said, rolling his eyes in Sirius' direction.

"Not that this isn't lovely or anything, but how about we go inside," Sirius suggested.

"Better inside with some dignity than out here with you two," Regulus said, shortly, pushing past his brother and Remus to enter the home. The door slammed behind him and Sirius was sure that he heard his mother's voice, and certain that no was worrying about his absence. His family was infinitely more invested in their younger son than they were in their eldest.

Sirius sighed and led the way into his home, opening the door to reveal the front hall. The hallway was lined with portraits of past family members, their eyes seeming to follow in an almost eerie way. Sirius discarded his pack of cigarettes into an umbrella stand near the end of the hallway. "You'll be happy to know I don't smoke when I'm at home at all," he said in a hushed voice, smiling at Remus, who was looking about the hallway in interest.

"I'm proud of you," Remus replied, distantly, his eyes fixed on Sirius' grandfather Arcturus Black.

"I'd really rather that you met my father first, but – oh, that's not going to possible is it," Sirius mumbled as he glowered at Regulus he was looking at them from the dining room doorway. "I would have to imagine that's our cue. Come on," he said, grabbing Remus' hand and pulling him towards the dining room.

"What about our stuff?" Remus asked, sounding confused.

"That's why we have servants, and believe me; you don't want to stick around to see the hired help," Sirius explained. He managed to say all of this in one breath before they reached the dining room, at which point he quickly let go of Remus' hand and then entered the room, trying to focus his gaze on the empty chairs on the right side of the table. If he met his mother's eyes she would see right through him. She always did. He let himself have a quick glance towards Regulus though.

_How much did you tell her?_

But Regulus' eyes, unlike his own, told no such information. "Can we get a fire started or something?" Sirius asked lazily, trying to keep things nonchalant. He fell into one of the chairs and, reflexively, folded his hands in front of him. There were so many things he was accustomed to doing in the house, that he did them without thinking. Things he would never do at school in front of everyone, but that he always did when his mother was watching.

"And your friend, the boy standing right behind you, you feel no reason to introduce him to your mother, Sirius?" Walburga Black's voice was shrill, but quiet. One got the impression that it could easily rise into a scream at any second, a dangerous whisper only left her tongue at the moment, though. Sirius faltered as he only did with the woman who had, debatably, raised him, and his grey eyes met her cold, discernable ones.

Of course she saw, of course she understood and of course he told her. Whatever plans he had – none – were abandoned and what came out of his mouth was a mixture of the truth and some sort of fabrication that he didn't even understand. "What? Remus? I didn't tell you he was coming?" Right, he must have missed it in his daily letter that he sent home to his dearest mother. "I'm quite sorry for that mother, this is Remus Lupin and he is – " A friend, my boyfriend, a boy that I'm completely enamored with? "Ah, he's on a scholarship."

Remus extended his hand and a smile to Sirius' mother, who only stared at him in response. "Scholarship for what? Is he actually smart or is Dumbledore being the piteous fool that he always has been?" Putting their Headmaster down was just a normal part of the routine. Remus looked a bit shocked while Sirius just yawned. Regulus even seemed to be bored from where he stood next to their mother. The two brothers were so used to their mother's long, tumultuous rants about how terribly corrupt the system was, letting the commoners into noble schools and such things that they usually drifted off while she was speaking.

"Actually, ma'am, if I may," Remus said innocently, getting a stunned look back from the 'ma'am' he was addressing. "I was only awarded the scholarship after undergoing quite a few tests. All of which I did quite admirably on, if I may say so myself. Also, I have a bit of thing for the piano and I was told musical talent is something of a must-have if you're aiming for such a prestigious school as Bromsgrove."

"A bit of a thing?" Sirius muttered to himself under his breath, a faint smile on his lips. The words he heard coming out of Remus' mouth almost sounded rehearsed and he had to wonder why this was, but only for a brief moment. He was more worried about what his mother's reaction would be. Sirius wouldn't put it past her to refuse letting Remus stay for the next two weeks.

"I suppose your parents already think you're staying at our house, don't they?" Sirius' mother said shortly, her thin fingers tapping against the oak table impatiently. Even though she had been the one to seem interested in the reason for Remus' scholarship at first, she was now acting as if she was barely concerned with it. Remus just nodded, blankly. "Quite a shame, isn't it? Well, I would suggest that all three of you get ready for dinner then, it should be done in about an hour."

"Where's father?" Sirius asked, wondering why Orion Black hadn't shown his face through the entire encounter. His father may not have been hospitable, but compared to his mother, well, Orion was something of a breath of fresh air. At the very least he was the only one in the family that Sirius was able to talk to. Granted, he had been going a bit odd the past few months, but who wouldn't when they were married to someone like Walburga Black?

"Nowhere you should be worrying about, now go get ready for dinner like I told you," his mother snapped.

Sirius was becoming relatively sure that this was, in fact, going to be the worst Christmas vacation of his life.

* * *

"You're a bit different around your mum than you are around, well, every other living being, aren't you?" Remus said as the two of them entered Sirius' room. It was near the back of the second story, the only room with any sense of decoration in the owner's mind. Because there was only one small, dusty window over the headboard of the large bed he opted for several lamps, one on his desk, one beside his bed and another floor lamp by the door, which he switched on the moment they walked in.

"Would this bit," he said, holding his pointer finger and thumb a small distance from one another, "be anything like your bit of talent for the piano? Which we have two of, by the way, one that will bore you to tears because it's only a year or two old and the other which will probably make you want to cry from excitement because it's practically ancient." He fell back on his bed in exhaustion, figuring that it would take him about two minutes, tops, to get ready for dinner.

"You'd rather that I had thrown my talent in her face?" Remus asked, as he looked at several of the posters that were on Sirius' wall. "I thought perhaps she would appreciate some modesty on my part. I mean, I'm doing my best with what you've told me about your family, which is, quite honestly, nothing, nothing at all." He sat at the end of Sirius' bed, which made no noise, unlike the beds at school, to protest the extra weight.

"That's kind of what we do you know, whatever the opposite of modest is," Sirius said, sitting up to face Remus. "We show off what we have, because it makes everyone else angry. That's all we're doing. Making someone else jealous with what we have. That's all we are to them; Regulus and I. Something to brag about to other parents. Not me, I suppose, I'm just the relatively average son who could settle with living a slightly above average life. Regulus is the one with ambitions and the smarts to get what he wants."

"You know, you're smart too," Remus began to point out.

"If only I applied myself, I know, Rem," Sirius said, his tone bored. "I've heard it a million times over. From my teachers, my parents, my friends – especially you. I don't want to apply myself. There's nothing I do better than anyone else anyway. Everyone I know has some sort of special talent, the only thing I was ever good at was getting girls and, well, that doesn't really matter anyway."

Then Remus blushed and looked away, saying, "I suppose you're right about that, but it's not true that you're not good at anything." Their eyes met and Sirius raised his eyebrows. "You're sociable, you know, that's a good thing. I'm certainly not able to talk to whoever I please. If I hadn't dropped my books in the library I don't think we ever would have said more than a few words to each other, because I certainly wouldn't have found the courage."

"Oh believe me, we would have met somehow, although it is doubtful that it would have happened in the library," Sirius said with a shrug.

"So you _were _only there to see me, then," Remus said excitedly, a smile forming dreamily on his face. "Goodness that's romantic, risking your reputation for me."

"Shush, I wasn't risking anything for you," Sirius lied. "My reputation is spotless, perfect even. Studying in library just makes me that much more attractive. It gives that smart guy edge. I was just keeping myself, y'know, well rounded. Covering all the bases. Whatever that means." Alright, so maybe he was lying through his teeth, but the look on Remus' face made it clear that he knew this. That they both knew this didn't really care. "By the way, what was up with that cute little scholarship speech you gave my mum?"

"Ah," Remus said, grinning slightly, but looking embarrassed. "It's what I told my mum happened. Because, usually, you would have to go through all that to get a scholarship. Dumbledore just looked at my transcripts, then my financial state and accepted me within minutes. So I made all that up to appease her, since she probably would have complained about it. My mum is too proud for her own good," he added fondly.

"Well at least someone around here likes their mum," Sirius said cheerily, jumping off of the bed. He grabbed a dark blue sweater off the ground and shrugged, figuring it was the best he was going to. "My mum is big on family dinner. And by 'family dinner' I mean we all look like the Queen is visiting us and we talk about things that none of us really care about."

"Goodness, that sounds like when my family comes over for the holidays," Remus said, matching Sirius' upbeat tone as he rummaged through his trunk for something appropriate. "Do you think your mum hates me?" he asked after a few silent moments.

"Rem, my mum hates everyone."

* * *

Sirius cleared his throat, for what felt like the hundredth time that evening, as he pushed the food on his plate around. Remus sat to his left and Regulus to his right. The head of the table was empty, where his father usually sat. Orion Black was still conspicuously absent from Grimmauld Place. His mother sat across from them, daintily eating everything, while still managing to look stern.

"Did father die or something?" Sirius asked finally. "It's alright, you can tell me. I won't throw some fit or something, I promise to accept it and move on with my life."

"You need worry not about where your father is, Sirius," his mother responded.

"Well need I worry not about it or…look, just where is he?" Sirius pressed on.

"I said not to worry about it!" Sirius shrunk down, trying to hide his smile of triumph behind his hand. He often tried to get his mother to blow up over little things, but never to the point where she actually got mad at him. She would always just settle back into his polite little mode, acting as if nothing had happened. Sirius was convinced that one day she would simply snap and run around the house screaming like a madwoman. But he wasn't looking for this to happen tonight.

"Is father at work?" Regulus asked, his voice sickening sweet from where he sat beside Sirius.

"No, Regulus, he'll be home tomorrow though," their mother said, wiping her mouth with the cloth napkin in front of her. Sirius gaped at her. He had been asking all night where his father was and hadn't gotten one answer either way. Regulus asked one simple question and got a definitive answer right then and there. Sirius was ready to yell something himself until Remus pinched his leg under the table and gave him a meaningful look.

He wouldn't say anything this time, but it was only because of Remus.

* * *

"Your mum doesn't seem to hate Regulus," Remus said. It was late that night; they were both sitting on Sirius' bed even though Remus was supposed to be staying in the room next door. Sirius wasn't tired in the least and wouldn't let Remus go to bed despite the other boy's repeated yawns.

"Yeah, and she doesn't seem to hate my father either," Sirius said with a shrug. "I'm pretty sure she just hates humanity. She just chooses to not show it to everyone. Wait until my father gets here, those two are priceless together." Actually, he wasn't sure if Remus would ever even see his father when he showed up. Orion was the type of man to stay in his office all day, working whatever it was he worked on every day, angered by interruptions.

"I bet," Remus said with a small smile. "I think I'm going to go to bed though, I'm exhausted."

"Can you…not?" Sirius asked quietly. Remus, who was now standing up, gave him an odd look. "I hate being here, you know, and I'm so used to feeling alone around here. Especially when my…dad is gone. He's the only person who really accepts me in my family." Remus sat back down on the bed next to him and took his hand, Sirius smiled faintly. "So, maybe, just for tonight?"

Remus returned the smile and then let go of his hand. "Alright, sure, I'll just go get changed and get an extra blanket and everything so I can sleep on the floor."

"Hey, Rem?" Sirius said, just as Remus was leaving the room. The smaller boy turned around to look at him from the doorway. "Thanks for, well, just about everything."

"I think it's the other way around," Remus replied thoughtfully.

"Perhaps," Sirius said, with his normal, arrogant smile. "And, Moony? I wouldn't worry about sleeping on the floor if I was you."

**A/N**: Wasn't that cute? Oh, goodness, I know. I won't even tell you where this story is going. We'll just pretend it's going to be a happy little romance, hmm? Also, Grimmauld Place here is not Grimmauld place in the books, deal. One thing to say. I appreciate this story being put on alerts and favorites. But reviews, oh, they make my day. And it's only one click and a few keystrokes away really. Please consider reviewing because it really does make me happy. Like this: :D


	10. Presto Agitato

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: AH! This broke one hundred reviews. Thank you so much to everyone who helped with that. If I could I would send my love to all of you. Alright so this chapter is like this huge mix of fluff, a bit of humor, more fluff, family angst, and, well, fluff. The chapter title is the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata, but the story is far from over. I now have the entire Sonata ( in two parts ) on my profile page, so check it out. So, Beethoven, from whom we get the lovely Sonata, once said that only the pure of heart can make good soup. Makes sense to me.

**Chapter Ten**: Presto Agitato

"I, Sirius Black, don't get sick," Sirius Black moaned the next afternoon, as he lay in bed, feeling terribly and hopelessly sick. He was talking to himself because he was by himself. Remus had left nearly an hour ago and Sirius, while dying to know where he was, didn't have the energy to get up and do anything about it. Instead he was entertaining himself as he rolled about in his bed. "Does no one care that I'm sick?" he cried at his door, which was flung wide open. There was no answer. "Oh, the humanity!"

His nose was stuffy, his eyes were watery, he had what might possibly be the worst sore throat in the entire world and one minute it felt like he was covered in ice and the next he was in a burning inferno. Right now it was an inferno and he only just managed to kick the blanket off all while bemoaning the pain he was in. "Oh, God, why must you accurse me so?"

"Probably because you haven't been to church since last Easter." Sirius sat up in bed, abruptly and found himself glaring at Regulus. It wasn't a real glare, it was just that he wasn't sure how else to feel about his brother being in his room. The last time they had been together in his bedroom had been years ago, when there were no posters on the walls, when you could see the Victorian wallpaper underneath, years that Sirius could only just remember.

To have Regulus standing in his room was quite strange to say the least. "Did mother die, then?" he asked after a moment. "Not that I really care, it's just-just-just," he sneezed rather suddenly and then continued, "just that I'm wondering if she left me in her will at all. I'll take that look as she left everything to you?" He was referring to the raised eyebrow and crossed arms, the slight smirk on Regulus' face that seemed to scream out inheritance.

"Actually, no, you'll be disappointed to hear that she is alive and well," his brother replied, dryly. His eyes were drifting the posters, the bands he had never heard of and never wanted to hear of, the films that Sirius liked at that the rest of his family scoffed at. "Actually, uh," Regulus continued, stumbling over his words for some reason, "father is home and I figured you would want to know or something." He couldn't even look at his older brother as he spoke. "I doubt you would have heard what with you hollering about how sick you are anyway."

Then, just as suddenly as he had appeared, Sirius' younger brother was gone and the eldest sibling was left alone to roll over in contemplation. Either he could stay here in his bed and complain to himself about how sick he was or he could take a blanket to his father's office and complain to him about how sick he was. The latter seemed to be the only logical option in Sirius' mind, and soon enough he was walking down the hallway, rubbing his eyes and sniffling all the while, clutching a burgundy blanket around his shoulders.

"Dad?" he said, dragging out the word as he pushed the large, wooden door open to reveal the impeccable office. Orion Black sat behind a desk and a formidable pile of papers. He only looked up as his son and nodded him in with a sigh. It was as it always was. There was no getting rid of Sirius when he had his mind set on something and at the moment he wanted to talk to his father. Sirius shut the door behind him and bounded towards the desk, settling himself into one of the comfortable dark blue chairs across from his father. "I'm sick."

"I presumed something was wrong when all I got was a polite response at the front door," his father replied, his voice almost muffled as he leaned over the papers in front of him, apparently inspecting something. Sirius liked to believe that he got his good looks from the man in front of him. Though getting on in age, Orion Black was undeniably a handsome man, so much so that his graying hair was distinguished, not elderly and the wrinkles around his now-dull gray eyes were studious, not aging.

"Sorry dad," Sirius sniffled, "I know that must have been heart-wrenching." The sound of papers shuffling came in response to his remark. It was as it always was. Though his father took more interest in him that his mother or his brother that didn't really mean much. "Did you meet my friend Remus? He's over for the holidays, you know. I think it nearly gave mother a heart attack." _Not that anyone would have batted an eye at that, _he added to himself, thoughtfully.

For a moment his father said nothing, and then he sighed and stopped moving papers around and looked at Sirius. "Did I meet who, now?" he asked. Sirius disliked the tone of his voice, the whole façade of caring that his father was putting on, but it was better than the blatant uncaring attitude the rest of his family treated him to. The only interest that had been taken in his life, as fake as it might have been, came from his father. It was something that Sirius had rather mixed feelings about, but settled with, if only for the lack of something better.

"Remus Lupin, about this tall?" Sirius asked, reaching one hand up to about the height he imagined Remus was, which was just generally short and quite adorable, he though to himself happily. He sneezed as he did so and his hand dipped down to the floor as his whole body did. "Excuse me," he said, because no one blessed you in the Black family home. "Also, another distinguishing feature about Remus is that you would have no idea who he was and that he looks nothing like any of us."

Orion nodded, seeming to think about this for a moment. "No, I'm quite sure the only people I've seen this morning have been my wife and my two sons. One of whom seems quite sure that his father has nothing better to than sit around and talk about new friends." His father was putting on such a good mask today, even the slightest smile gracing his handsome lips as he spoke the words in a false, warm tone. Like he was asking Sirius to leave politely rather than insinuating that he should be gone.

"Oh, right, well, sorry dad, just wanted to say hello and happy holidays and all those other good things," Sirius said amidst a few sniffles and a cough or two. He even had the dignity to wipe his nose on the burgundy blanket and not on the dark blue chair he was sitting in. Sirius' father couldn't help but smile as his son left the office. Sirius was quite the gentleman, in the way that someone with no class was.

Sirius, did, however, find the time to wipe his nose on Regulus' maroon scarf.

* * *

"Hello mother."

"Hello Sirius." She was reading a book, daintily like she did everything. Turning the pages like they were made of cobwebs, liable to break at the slightest touch. She was dressed prim and proper like they were having company. They never had company. She was always dressed like that, just sitting in the sitting room by the fire and reading. The curtains drawn over the window so that she couldn't see out the window. Goodness knows what the weather might have done to her poor, little heart.

_Stupid dramatics, _Sirius thought to himself as he pulled the blanket even tighter around his shoulders and tried not to sniffle. Gentlemen didn't sniffle. Perhaps he could manage to do it in a dignified way. His father could probably do it, but Sirius wasn't at all like his father much to his family's disappointment. He promptly sat down in front of the fireplace because he wasn't sure where else to go.

"Have you," Sirius asked in the sweetest voice he could manage, "by any chance, seen Remus lately, mother?" He leaned closer to flames, letting their warmth engulf him, letting his eyes grow tired and a yawn escape his mouth. He yawned again, this time leaning backwards and rubbing his eyes in the process. All this time his mother only coughed delicately and turned a page in the book gracefully. "Mother?" he said, tentatively, turning to face her.

"Well, no, Sirius, I have not, because I wasn't the one to invite someone over to the house and then sleep well into the afternoon, even missing the arrival of my father, and somehow happen to lose my guest in the process." She didn't even bat an eyelash, just went about her reading elegantly, like she had taken classes in how to look like a fragile doll while turning pages.

"Ah, I see," Sirius said, standing up. His legs were a bit wobbly and he yawned once more, stretching up towards the ceiling. "I have to wonder if you're the reason that my relationships with women don't work," he found himself muttering as he walked towards the door.

"What was that?" Out of nowhere his mother's voice was harsh and full of malice.

"I didn't say anything," Sirius replied innocently, thankful that his mother couldn't see the grin on his face.

* * *

The last place that Sirius thought to look was the piano room. Which, in and of itself was not all that grand. His father had played the piano years back. When they kept the illusion of family and had people over for the holidays, other families and friends. Back when his mother and father were husband and wife, not just Orion and Walburga Black, two isolated figures living in the same house. Sirius had to imagine that was part of the reason that he liked Remus' talent, though he would never admit it.

Just like he would never admit his jealousy to the talent. Sirius just stared down at the black and white keys in front of him and wondered how in the world those lifeless things managed to produce the music they did. He felt much too sick to think about though, just those simple thoughts made him feel dizzy. Concentrating on one thing at a time was good enough for him and right now it was Where In The World Is Remus Lupin? His stomach was making some awful noises so he was also in favor of some food.

"God, is it too much trouble to ask for some Remus with a helping of, I don't know, whatever you got up there?" he said quietly to himself, laying his head on the cool surface of the piano and closing his eyes.

"I don't know about God, but, uh, I did bring you something to eat." Sirius' head shot up to see Remus half-smiling at him and looking almost nervous at the same time, a bowl in one hand and sheet music in the other. The bowl was handed to Sirius and the sheet music set on the piano as Remus sat on the bench next to him. "Are you feeling any better than when I left you earlier? Your kitchen is really confusing, by the way."

Sirius just stared down at the bowl – full of soup – and smiled at it happily. "Delicious, it looks just like the maids used to make it," Sirius said, although the fact that this was a small anecdote was lost in his sickness. It was hard to funny when you were trying to concentrate on not sneezing on the boy you were attracted to. Being sick was all kinds of awkward. "So that's what you've been doing for _hours_? Making me food?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Remus said in response, although he blushed as Sirius smiled at him. "I wasn't even going to make anything for you. You mentioned that you had two pianos last night so I decided to take the initiative to find them without you and I succeeded. Then I felt like playing something but all my sheet music was with my trunk, which is still in my – or rather what is supposed to be my – room, and searching for that was going fine until your brother suggested I do something to shut you up."

At the mention of his brother Sirius nearly choked on the soup he was eating. For a moment he just sat there, motionless, trying to imagine his brother suggesting that to Remus that he should, of all things, do something for nice for Sirius. Remus, with a sigh, used the sleeve of his sweater to wipe up the soup that Sirius had spilled on the piano and the bench they were sitting on. "Regulus asked you to help me?" Sirius said, trying to make his voice sound less surprised than he felt.

"Asked?" Remus said with a small laugh. "I think you understood me wrong. Your brother told me to, and I quote, 'make him shut up or something.' Does that sound more appropriate for him?"

"Yes, yes that does sound a lot more like the Regulus I know and…well, know, really," Sirius admitted with a small shrug, resuming his eating.

"Hmm," Remus said softly. Sirius froze; soup just centimeters from his mouth as he groaned inwardly. He knew Remus was thinking and that he was now going to have to endure some of his undying wisdom. Sure enough the next words out of Remus' mouth were: "You don't love him? Sure he can be a bit of a bother, but he _is _your brother after all. Don't you kind of have to – "

"Nope," Sirius replied, shortly.

"Oh," Remus said. They sat in silence while Sirius sniffled and Remus thought. "Well, can I ask, why not?"

"Sure, ask away," Sirius said, knowing full well that he was going to get a glare in response. "Alright fine, I'll give you an answer. Look, Regulus is better than me at everything my parents care about someone being skilled at. He's polite to them; he applies himself at school; he doesn't do anything they don't approve of. Basically, he's perfect to them. Outside of this place Regulus doesn't have a lot of friends, he's not very sociable. I am, in case you haven't noticed. It's a mutual dislike between us because we both wish we had something the other has so easily." Sirius sighed and moved the spoon around in the bowl.

"I suppose that makes sense to me," Remus said, smiling softly. "You can't stand to see someone around you that has exactly what you want and doesn't even have to try to have it. I can relate." He wasn't looking at Sirius anymore, instead he was staring down at the ivory keys, his right hand lightly tracing across a few of them. "Neither one of you admits it either, but you both feel the same way. You both care about each other, but you're so envious of what the other one has that you don't let it show."

Sirius just managed a short laugh, because he wasn't sure what else to say. Remus was all too good at reading people, because he had gotten the saga of the two brothers down perfectly, like he had read their minds. "Well, despite the fact that you're right about that I don't think it matters much. We've always been like that; we always will be as long as we live, and I can't say that it really bothers me all that much." Even though it did, because brothers weren't supposed to be like that.

"You two are the only people who can do anything about it," Remus said resignedly. "But you have to admit, as brothers, you should act a bit more civil towards one another. Just to let each other know you care. Or maybe I'm just being really, extremely queer right now."

Soup once more hit the piano as Sirius laughed raucously at this. Hearing Remus call himself a 'queer' in such a lighthearted tone during a serious conversation was just too much. "Maybe I will if I'm feeling really queer next time I see him," he said. Remus snorted as he, once again, used the sleeve of his sweater to wipe up the soup from the piano. "So are you going to play for me or not?"

"In a moment," Remus said, suddenly solemn as he pushed the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows.

After what felt like a lot of moments to an exceptionally impatient Sirius Black he said, "Now?"

"I'm trying to think of how to say this," Remus snapped. Then he blushed, not like he usually did, but a real blush, his face was bright red. "Sorry, I didn't mean to get angry, I just, I can't think of how to say _this_, but I always know how to say things, so it really doesn't make any sense, Sirius!" Now he seemed to be just saying things that popped into his head, not making much sense at all.

"Just say it?" Sirius offered, smiling at how flustered the other young man was getting. The bowl in his hands was empty and he set it down on the floor, out of the way.

"I – there aren't any words to," Remus practically whined, looking positively helpless. Then, swiftly, his amber eyes lit up and he was smiling once more. "Well I suppose there's always just the music." He flipped open the sheet music while Sirius watched. "It's the third movement of the song." Sirius found himself smiling. He had been waiting for ages to finally hear this. "And, just, well, music is love in search of a word."

And then Remus played. Sirius was ashamed to say that he could barely focus on the fast-paced third movement because he was too busy thinking about the words that had just come out of Remus' mouth. _Music is love in search of a word. _All that Sirius could take that to mean was something completely impossible. Because wasn't he the self-professed non-believer of love? This entire time, ever since the kiss in town, Sirius had never once imagined that Remus loved him.

The thought had never crossed his mind. Love had never even surfaced over the waves of pure attraction that he had towards the boy and now here he was looking at a young man who had, in a way, just professed his love to him, or rather, was doing it by playing the piano for him. Now Sirius didn't know what to do, because he had never once, ever, really loved someone before. Not like this, and he wasn't sure if that was exactly how he felt about Remus, after all.

Sure, he cared for Remus and of course he was attracted to him. There was no denying those facts, but there was also no way that he could easily say that he truly loved Remus, as much as he might want to. But, then, wasn't that how Remus felt too? Playing the piano was hardly the same as telling someone that you loved them. Sirius thanked whatever higher power had helped to make sure the third movement was as long as it was. Hell, if there were such things as ghost he would write a thank-you letter to Beethoven himself.

Sirius was so engulfed in his thoughts that he didn't even notice that the music had ended and Remus was looking at him, almost expectantly. But Sirius didn't know what to do, he didn't have the words to say anything nor the talent to play music like Remus did for him. Instead he only knew how to do one thing and, damn it all, Sirius Black might not be good at much, but he certainly was a good kisser.

"I'm taking that as…uh, you like me too?" Remus questioned after their lips parted.

"Just a bit, Moony, just a little bit," Sirius said. "There's just one thing I'm wondering though. James told me…or rather, I've just heard around, that you don't believe in love."

"I bet you have," Remus said with a smile. "Take into consideration that I've heard around that you're the most terrible guy at school and anyone stuck in a relationship with you can expect two weeks of nothing but sex and then to never talk to you again. But again, that's just what I've heard around." Sirius grimaced, knowing that 'around' was synonymous with Lily Evans. "To answer your question, which wasn't really a question, but I know what you're asking regardless, I'm not quite sure how I feel about love anymore or if this is even it. It's just, well; it's the closest I've ever gotten to it I suppose."

"I don't know if this is love either," Sirius said contentedly, sniffling to himself as he thought. Finally he just let his head rest on Remus' shoulder and said, "Just play some more music for me?"

**A/N**: First off, I know. They kissed while Sirius was sick. Kind of gross and now Remus might end up sick, but it's the price you pay for not being sure if you love him, Rem. I know this chapter isn't very long, but it's setting up for the next chapter, which will be the last one during the holidays. Then we get back to school and all that good stuff. A few things to say. Nearly 60 people have this on alerts, but not all of you review, and I'm not mad it just makes me a tad bit sad. So press the little button that says Go! and leave me a few words of encouragement. Also, you should go read my newest fic if you like this one. I'll love you forever if you review it. Good night and good luck, my dears!

By the way, someone figured out where the plot is going, oh my. D:


	11. Volti Subito

**So Much For Love**

**A/N**: I wrote almost the whole last chapter for this story. I'm really surprised with how I see things ending, I didn't expect it at all when I wrote it, but it's fitting, so now I can't wait for you guys to read it, aha. The story is going to be twenty chapters, or should be, rather, but more on that next time. Chapter title, Volti Subito, it marks a part in the music when you have to turn the page quickly, turn a new leaf perhaps, change things abruptly, hmm? Well, we'll see. I apologize for the very, very apparent lack of Rem in much of this chapter, you'll see what I mean and hopefully understand why.

**Chapter Eleven**: Volti Subito

Remus wasn't paying attention to him and it was driving Sirius mad. No matter how many times he cleared his throat or coughed or sniffled or moaned. "How much _longer _is this going to take, Moony?" he asked, holding out the last syllable of the nickname until it was almost a whine. Remus didn't respond, just turned a page in his book and continued to write things down on his paper. Sirius sighed and buried his face in his arms.

They had been sitting there for what felt like hours, even though, in reality, it couldn't have been more than thirty minutes. Remus was sitting at the top of the bed, leaning against the headboard as he immersed himself in homework. Sirius, on the other hand, was using his Chemistry textbook as a pillow, taking up most of the bed as he lay on it, complaining about the situation. "Rem?" he asked, looking up at the other boy and doing his best to sound innocent. Remus didn't look at him but muttered something that sounded like a 'what' and which Sirius took as incentive to continue.

"Do you like homework more than you like me?"

"I hardly think I'm going to decide to elope with my Chemistry homework, so no."

"Oh, because it kind of _seems _like you would like to elope with it," Sirius said quietly, laying his head back down on his arms as they retreated back to silence. After a few more minutes of that Sirius took a deep breath and then exhaled, blowing his hair out of his eyes. Remus gave him an amused look and Sirius smiled because he had succeeded in getting his attention at least once.

"You know, you're the one that really needs to be working on this," Remus said softly. Even so he closed the book and set it to the side with a small sigh. "But we do still have a few days of holidays left so I suppose it wouldn't exactly hurt to take a break now would it?" The past week had gone by extraordinarily fast, although this was probably because Sirius wasn't sitting around, alone, in his room for the first time. Christmas had been uneventful as usual in the Black household.

The family was exceedingly religious, something that Sirius didn't buy all that much into. As such you might expect that Christmas was a big deal. But, no, Sirius' mother was firm in the fact that Christmas had nothing to do with celebration, it had to do with praying, and lots of it, at the dinner table. Naturally Sirius had just pretend to be talking to a higher power and exchanged bored glances with Remus the entire time and apologized profusely for it later. Remus wouldn't accept the apologies and eventually had to shut Sirius up himself, something that, admittedly, neither one of them minded much.

"It wouldn't hurt one bit!" Sirius exclaimed happily.

Remus just smiled for a minute, but then his expression changed to that of thoughtful and he suddenly jumped off the bed – literally – and practically ran to the doorway. "Hold on, I need to get something," he said, cheerfully, looking back at Sirius who just grinned back in dreamy surprise, watching as the smaller boy left his sight, yet never keeping his eyes off of the doorway.

The best part, about Remus, he had decided very recently had nothing to do with what Sirius usually liked about a person. Usually he liked people because they did certain things and didn't like them for doing other certain things. Plain and simple he liked them at the same time that he didn't. Everything was a love-hate relationship, because he never fully liked anyone or anything.

Not to say that he liked everything about Remus. Some of the things the boy did irritated him to no end. Such as his automatic view that homework should have precedence over everything else or how he was always chewing on the end of his pencil while he was thinking. No, Sirius didn't like everything about Remus. But the thing about Remus was that he made Sirius feel like none of that mattered. He made him admit that he didn't like everything about him, but he was the only person that made that not matter.

It was almost scary. The way they were both so easily accepting that fact. Sirius never voiced these feelings, but he suspected that Remus knew of them or something of the like. After all, they both knew the ferocity of Sirius' temper and were both well aware of the fact that he had yet to ever, truly, get mad at Remus. The thought of this somehow made Sirius smile as he lay there on his bed, waiting, the smile laced with some sort of odd feeling of longing.

Something else that scared him – he hated being away from Remus.

"Happy Christmas!" Remus was back, still happy, dropping something silver and shining in front of Sirius' face. It was a necklace, Sirius realized, and Remus was holding it by the top of its chain, so that Sirius could see the charm at the bottom, which was a simple, script letter 'C' that made Sirius stare at it in confusion. "It was my mum's," Remus added quietly, his voice less happy than before. "Here, let me put it on."

Of course, if it had been anyone else Sirius would have sputtered out some sort of disbelieving laugh, but because it was Remus he simply sat up and let the tawny-haired boy work at getting the necklace on him. It was almost amusing how Remus couldn't get the clasp to work exactly right and was flushing as he mumbled small obscenities under his breath the entire time. When irritated, it turned out, Remus' vocabulary expanded and became extremely vulgar. Finally he got the clasp to work and then just held the tiny charm in his palm, staring at it.

After a moment Sirius took his hand and gently held it. "Why did you give this to me?"

"It was…my mum's," Remus echoed his words before in the same quiet tone. Then he met Sirius' gaze and just sighed, looking away. "You know, my mom is really happy I'm going to school where I am now. She thinks it will really make things better for me. I – don't know if it will, but I pretend I feel the same way. We both have the same problem – our hearts. My dad says we're blessed because, strictly speaking, neither of us should even be alive. My mum…"

There was a long silence, neither one of them spoke or moved, Remus because he didn't want to say something and Sirius because he had lost and idea of what was right to say at the moment. "My mum is probably going to die soon and she knows it. He, my dad, he knows it too and so do I. The last time I saw her she gave this to me," he gestured with his free hand to the necklace. "I asked her why and she didn't answer me. But, if there's one thing I do know, I've been waiting for someone to give it to, and you're the only person that makes sense."

"But, why?" Sirius asked, again, this time asking for a different reason. He knew what he wanted Remus to say, he had realized it over the past week or so. He just wanted to know why _him_? Why had Remus chosen him out of everyone to open up to? All he was to everyone else was Sirius Black, infamous 'fuck you and fuck-up' who could hardly maintain a C-average, much less an actually relationship. And, if he remembered correctly, Remus had admitted to hearing things about him before and yet here he was, still. The only other person who even came close to this was James, but that was hardly the same.

"Because…you're really all I have left, Sirius. For some reason I can't stand the thought of losing you."

_I love you_. "I feel the same way, Rem," Sirius responded, dazed, planting a small kiss on Remus' forehead before they went back to the other Chemistry they were working on. _But for some reason I can't tell you…not yet._

* * *

The weird part was that Sirius had seen this coming. The whole awkward shift, where no one knew what to say and time nearly stopped. He had felt that feeling before a few times, but never with anyone in his intermediate family. The cold feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realized what Regulus was realizing, as their eyes locked and he knew that they didn't have any connection at all, because they brothers in the sense of the basic word and nothing more.

The worse part was that Sirius had never figured Remus into the equation. For him it had simply been the gun and the victim. Somehow he had forgotten all about the bullet and how essential it was to everything. Because when you put the bullet and the gun together, only then, could you produce a victim. And, oh, had they been put together, in the piano room, such a spur of the moment thing that Sirius was almost disappointed that _this _was when Regulus had found out.

Remus had was playing something, practicing it, at a slower pace than he usually played, staring at the notes on the page as his fingers pressed the corresponding keys. Every time he had messed up he immediately stop and huff and start _all _over again. Needless to say Sirius found it thoroughly adorable and reminded Remus of this fact countless times until the other young man found it prudent to, albeit politely, tell him exactly which part of the afterlife he should go to.

It was _that _sudden burst of anger that caused Sirius to forget where they were and just start snogging him right then and there, even managing to push Remus off of the piano bench so that they were on the floor and right in plain sight of his brother who just so happened to walking down the hallway at that exact moment. For a minute Sirius hadn't even noticed until Remus, who had been responding quite eagerly up until that point, pushed him away.

"What the bloody hell are you – oh, _fuck_." None of them spoke, none of them moved, none of them looked away. Someone had pulled the plug on time and was taking there good old time on getting it up and running again. But the thing that surprised Sirius the most was that Regulus didn't run off to confront his mother and father, to tell them what dirty things he was getting up to in the piano room and, even worse, that it was with someone else of the male gender.

Instead Regulus, very slowly, turned around and walked away from the doorway without saying so much as a word. That would have been it, too, it hadn't been for Remus' insistence that he really needed to go talk to his brother, now, and his resistance to anything even borderline sexual. So now Sirius found himself standing in front of the closed door that led into Regulus' room, staring at the door and not knowing what to do. He could just walk around for a bit, convince Remus he had talked to his brother and then commence a nice snog-fest behind closed – and perhaps locked – doors. But he would regret that in the long run, Remus would find out, and that wouldn't end well.

So he knocked, very lightly and very briefly and then stood there waiting for a response. At first he expected there wasn't going to be one, and that maybe he could convince Remus that Regulus wouldn't talk to him and there was really nothing he could do about that, now was there? But then the door opened and Regulus was standing there, looking at him like he always did, but in a completely fake way.

"Hi," Sirius said shortly.

"Hi." The response was almost shaky, Sirius noticed, like his brother wasn't sure how to talk to him now. But Sirius ignored this and pushed past him into a room he hadn't been in for years. And he nearly did a double-take. Everything in the room was almost perfectly, exquisitely, just like his own in its own way. The bed was different, but in the same place relative to his own room, the comforter was a different print but it was folded down just like he always had it. The thing that struck him most was the posters. Three of them, in the exact same places that they were in Sirius' room. Not the same ones, but they were there for the same intended reason everything else in the room was.

Regulus, for a reason Sirius could not understand, had deliberately tried to make his room exactly like his older brothers.

"How…?" Sirius asked, turning around to face Regulus, whose face was flushed red.

"I – I…look, what are you hear to talk to me about?" Regulus snapped, his embarrassment easily careening off track and turning into unbridled anger. "God knows you wouldn't be in my room for any other reason than the fact that I just caught you and _him _doing…that. So spit it out and tell me off, tell me not to tell mother and father and to keep my mouth shut, because I know you're going to!"

Sirius was completely taken aback by the sudden show of emotion. They had rules to their relationship, they always had. One of them had seemed to be that they kept their emotions to a minimum, because neither brother liked to be vulnerable around the other, but that rule had obviously just been broken and Sirius wasn't sure what to do at this point because he had never talked to Regulus like this, not once in his entire lifetime. The only time they had been relatively close was when they were children, too young to really, truly talk to one another.

"That's not what I came here to say," he said weakly.

"Oh?" Regulus said, still looking angry, although his voice sounded less sure than he would have hoped.

"I mean, yeah, Reg, _please _don't tell mother and father and all that, but, I just wanted to make sure you didn't, I dunno, hate me now or something," Sirius admitted, keeping his eyes on the ground the entire time. He even had the same rug that Sirius did, covering up most of the wooden floor, the same oriental print on it and everything.

"Hate you?" Regulus said the words as if they were almost foreign to him which caused Sirius to look up at him, finally, and see that his brother looked almost happy at those words. "You mean you were _worried _that I might hate you?" He sounded excited at the thought. Sirius couldn't imagine why, but felt terrible knowing he had just lied. He hadn't worried at all about what Regulus thought of him, just what his parents would say when they found out from him what was going on.

"Well…well, yeah," Sirius deliberately lied.

"I don't _hate _you, Sirius, you're my brother," Regulus said. "It's like with you and father, he doesn't hate you and you don't hate him, but you tolerate each other, right?"

That hit Sirius hard, being reminded that his father tolerated him. His father didn't love him; he _tolerated _him, which was completely messed up. Your family was supposed to care about you, want to be around you, not just tolerate your presence because you just so happen to live in the same house. Come to think of it, if Sirius' family had even cared in the least about what the eldest son was getting up to then what would have happened? Would he and Regulus have some heartfelt talk about what was going on? Would his father be disappointed and yet support him? Would his mother simply take notice of what was going on?

Would any of them acknowledge that he was a living, breathing part of their family, rather than a minor inconvenience they had to stomach for about eighteen years?

"Right," Sirius choked out, finally, his eyes once again drifting around the room. "Why did you do this?" He knew it had to be on purpose, it wasn't just a coincidence that their rooms were nearly identical in looks, and there was some sort of reason behind it all. The only thing he couldn't understand was that Regulus never came in his room, so how would he even begin to know how to mirror everything in Sirius' room?

"Well," Regulus said with a weak laugh as he walked away from the door, and sat on the edge of the bed, "as stupid as it sounds, I thought maybe it would make us closer or something."

"Having your room like mine makes us closer?" Sirius asked, skeptically, leaning against the wall.

"It's something, isn't it?" Regulus said, catching his older brother's eyes. They stayed like that for a long moment, eyes locked, until Sirius tore his gaze away and returned it to the rug. "I mean, honestly, are we even _brothers_ Sirius? Are we really?" Sirius just kept looking at the rug, pretending he couldn't hear his brother. "Biologically, of course, we are, everyone always says I look like you, only you're more handsome, they always add." The last few words could easily be mistaken for 'hate.' "But, Sirius, we're not brothers…not really."

Sirius still didn't respond, just leaned firmly against the wall, his arms crossed, eyes boring into the floor, trying to meld into the wallpaper somehow so he didn't have to face the accusations. Yes, we are, he wanted to yell back, we are brothers, we always will be, but you and I will never be friends. For some reason he held back though, bit his tongue to avoid lashing out and just kept his eyes averted, even as Regulus continued to berate him.

"And the thing is, Sirius, it's all your fault, it really is, because you don't pay any attention to me, ever," Regulus spat, the venom of his words so striking that Sirius was forced to look at him. Only to find that Regulus didn't look angry, he looked overwhelmingly sad. "We talk, maybe, once a month, and it's the same conversation every single time. You never want to come here because you don't want to see mother and father any more than you absolutely have to. What about _me_, Sirius? I don't like being here either, but I don't have anyone else."

"You have to have…someone," Sirius managed, taking a few steps towards the bed, almost embarrassed for his younger brother who looked near to tears at this point.

"Just because _you _have someone doesn't mean everyone else does," Regulus replied. "Did you ever even wonder why I keep asking you? I mean…if I honestly didn't care about it I would have stopped doing that after a while. But I ask you every month, because I _hate _being here with them. It's even more lonely than school, Sirius." Regulus buried his face in the palms of his hands, not wanting to look at his brother.

Then, without even thinking, Sirius sat down next to him on the bed and put a hand on his brother's shoulder, which was possibly the only physical contact that had really had in years. "Regulus, I'm…sorry. I didn't _know_," he offered quietly, as he listened to the small sobs that escaped his brother's mouth. He remembered Remus, then, telling him that they ought to act more civil towards one another.

_Just to let each other know you care._

"I don't need friends, you know," Regulus said softly, finally looking up at Sirius. "But I kind of…I need a brother."

"Regulus, you stupid queer," Sirius said with a grin, "you _have _a brother."

To his surprise Regulus had the strength the push him off the bed and they both broke out into laughter. It wasn't real, nothing was really funny, but it was genuine, something they needed to do. "Speaking of queers," Regulus managed to say in his usual voice, almost like they were returning to how it had always been. "You and the new kid, huh? I really wasn't expecting that."

"I don't think anyone was," Sirius admitted with a small shrug, sitting up.

"So…do you love him?"

The question caught Sirius completely off guard and he just stared at his brother incredulously for a frozen minute. "I – I…that's completely not something that I need to…not that I don't, it's just that that's something I need to…to…think about," he managed to string the words together unconvincingly, the statements sounding false even to himself.

"I'll take that as a yes," Regulus said thoughtfully. "Going to go back to him now, then?"

"I guess," Sirius said as he stood up. "You want to come hang out with us or something?"

"You guys don't want me there," Regulus said with a small smile.

"Of course we do," Sirius responded.

Event though they both knew that wasn't true, they pretended it was. There was a small shift in the universe, insignificant to almost everyone, but life changing for the two brothers as they left Regulus' room together to go and meet up with Remus. Sirius realized that he had never really paid much attention to his brother, he had simply seen him as competition, someone his parents always compared him to. Regulus was like a pest in his life that he pretended wasn't there. Who knew how many times Regulus had been in his room and Sirius had just ignored him?

It was odd, to say the least, that they found each other together now, something the two brothers very rarely experienced, especially for extended lengths of time. It almost felt wrong and awkward and sometimes Sirius felt like they were going to revert back to _before _in an instant, without any warning. Yet, somehow, Sirius saw this as the beginning of something else, something that never would have been possible if it wasn't for the boy he was slowly falling in love with.

**A/N**: My writing style changed. Fuck. Once again sorry for the lack of Rem. Anyhow. Recently I realized why I, dare I say, write Sirius rather well. It's because, dun dun dun, I pretty much am Sirius Black. No kidding, I'm him in female form, and I even have his family as well. The only real difference between me and him is that I know a bit about music. How weird is that. Sorry this took longer than usual to write, I really don't know why that happened, this story is usually the easiest one for me to write. Ah well, since I took the time to write this for you, take the time to leave a review? (:


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